time-honored

adj

"time-honored" is a 11-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“time-honored” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

Unranked
below top-frequency English
12
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Honored because of great age, or long usage.

Corpus desk

Index EN-time-honored · time-honored · English

time-honored · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-MEGA 12 letters
  • VOW-5 5 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.

Key facts for time-honored
PropertyValue
Headwordtime-honored
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechAdjective
Letters12
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “time-honored” in English

time-honoredsits beyond the 100,000 most-frequent English words, in the long tail of technical, archaic, or otherwise rare vocabulary where spelling doubt tends to strike hardest.

Beyond rank #100,000. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

time-honored is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anadjective. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Honored because of great age, or long usage.".

time-honored doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.

This entry's etymology isn't recorded, so its spelling is best read as a straightforward mapping from sound to letter. The correct English form is time-honored, spelled T-I-M-E---H-O-N-O-R-E-D.

Definition

  1. 1
    Honored because of great age, or long usage.

Recorded use

Wiktionary example

These source excerpts show how time-honored appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. It would have been a great privilege to be the mistress of an old time-honoured mansion, to call oaks and elms her own, to know that acres of gardens were submitted to her caprices, to look at herds of cows and oxen, and be aware that they lowed on her own pastures.

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.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "time-honored"?
"time-honored" is spelled T-I-M-E---H-O-N-O-R-E-D.
What does "time-honored" mean?
As an adjective, "time-honored" means: Honored because of great age, or long usage.
What language does "time-honored" come from?
"time-honored" is a English word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list