tiffin
/ˈtɪf.ɪn/
"tiffin" is a 6-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“tiffin” is uncommon English (frequency #50,846 among 3,151 “T” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #50,846
- frequency rank, English
- 3,151
- “T” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A (light) midday meal or snack; luncheon.
Corpus desk
Index EN-tiffin · tiffin · English
tiffin · rank #50,846 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #50,846
- LEN-LONG 6 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 3,151
- PHOTO-FINISH Thurmond
Nearest frequency peer: Thurmond (-1 rank slots)
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.
Long-tail ranks near “tiffin”
Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter
- thievery
thievery
49,158 corpus weight
- Thurmond
Thurmond
49,156 corpus weight
- tiffin
tiffin
49,155 corpus weight
- timepiece
timepiece
49,154 corpus weight
- tourmaline
tourmaline
49,153 corpus weight
- tourniquet
tourniquet
49,152 corpus weight
What this shows Long-tail view: where “tiffin” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | tiffin |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈtɪf.ɪn/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #50,846 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “tiffin” in English
Rare enough to double-check
tiffin is uncommon English at frequency #50,846 among 3,151 “T” headwords, classed as anoun, transcribed /ˈtɪf.ɪn/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for tiffin, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
Etymologically, the entry records: Apparently from English tiffing, present participle of tiff (“to take a small drink, to sip”) (slang). The correct English form is tiffin, spelled T-I-F-F-I-N.
Definition
- 1A (light) midday meal or snack; luncheon.
- 2A box or container used to carry a tiffin.
- 3A cake-like confection composed of crushed biscuits, sugar, syrup, raisins, cherries and cocoa powder, often covered with a layer of melted chocolate.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how tiffin appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
He took his tiffin from home and ate the food two hours later in school.
[…] I bought a pine-apple at the same time, which I gave to Sambo. Let's have it for tiffin; very cool and nice this hot weather.
Etymology
Apparently from English tiffing, present participle of tiff (“to take a small drink, to sip”) (slang).
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "tiffin", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 6 letters (nearest by frequency rank).