tongue-twister
"tongue-twister" is a 13-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“tongue-twister” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 14
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A phrase that is deliberately designed to be difficult to say correctly, usually because of varying combinations of similar phonemes.
Corpus desk
Index EN-tongue-twister · tongue-twister · English
tongue-twister · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 14 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.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | tongue-twister |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 14 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “tongue-twister” in English
Rare enough to double-check
tongue-twister is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "A phrase that is deliberately designed to be difficult to say correctly, usually because of varying combinations of similar phonemes.".
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for tongue-twister, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. This headword has no recorded confusable partner, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
No documented word history exists for this headword, so any spelling logic here comes from how the word's sounds map to letters, not a documented origin story. The correct English form is tongue-twister, spelled T-O-N-G-U-E---T-W-I-S-T-E-R.
Definition
- 1A phrase that is deliberately designed to be difficult to say correctly, usually because of varying combinations of similar phonemes.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how tongue-twister appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
The present name being a translation, "in brief," of the original tongue-twister, meaning "the river of the rock"
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.