tic-tac-toe
"tic-tac-toe" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“tic-tac-toe” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 11
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A game in which two players take turns placing circles and crosses on a 3x3 grid and attempt to obtain three of the same symbols in a straight line.
Corpus desk
Index EN-tic-tac-toe · tic-tac-toe · English
tic-tac-toe · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 11 letters
- VOW-4 4 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 | tic-tac-toe |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 11 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “tic-tac-toe” in English
Rare enough to double-check
tic-tac-toe is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "A game in which two players take turns placing circles and crosses on a 3x3 grid and attempt to obtain three of the same symbols in a straight line.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for tic-tac-toe, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. We don't track a confusable pairing for this entry, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.
Etymologically, the entry records: Imitative; from tick-tack, used earlier to denote games in which the pieces made clicking sounds. The correct English form is tic-tac-toe, spelled T-I-C---T-A-C---T-O-E.
Definition
- 1A game in which two players take turns placing circles and crosses on a 3x3 grid and attempt to obtain three of the same symbols in a straight line.
Etymology
Imitative; from tick-tack, used earlier to denote games in which the pieces made clicking sounds.
Synonyms
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.