thin out
"thin-out" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“thin out” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 8
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To make sparse; to remove some of a group of newly-planted plants in order to allow the remaining ones to grow unimpeded.
Corpus desk
Index EN-thin-out · thin out · English
thin out · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 8 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "T" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | thin out |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 8 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “thin out” in English
Rare enough to double-check
thin out is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for thin out, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. We don't track a confusable pairing for this entry, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct English form is thin out, spelled T-H-I-N- -O-U-T.
Definition
- 1To make sparse; to remove some of a group of newly-planted plants in order to allow the remaining ones to grow unimpeded.
- 2To become sparse.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how thin out appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
And later on, when the crowd thinned out / I was just about to do the same / She was standing there in back of my chair / Said to me, "Don't I know your name?"
“Abandon Starbucks!” screamed a member of the staff, and his colleagues immediately stopped making coffees or bagging muffins and ran for their lives “It seems to be thinning out a little, ” announced Mr. Stink
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.