touch down

verb

"touch-down" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“touch down” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

Unranked
below top-frequency English
10
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To land an aircraft or spacecraft.

Corpus desk

Index EN-touch-down · touch down · English

touch down · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-MEGA 10 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.

Key facts for touch down
PropertyValue
Headwordtouch down
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechVerb
Letters10
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “touch down” in English

touch downsits 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

touch down is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.

The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for touch down, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.

Our source data has no etymology on file for this entry, so its spelling is best explained by sound-to-letter mapping rather than etymology. The correct English form is touch down, spelled T-O-U-C-H- -D-O-W-N.

Definition

  1. 1
    To land an aircraft or spacecraft.
  2. 2
    To score a touchdown
  3. 3
    To score a try.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

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

  1. The plane will touch down in Heathrow at about 2 o'clock.
  2. Centre Shontayne Hape scored two tries for England before the break, while Georgia number eight Dimitri Basilaia touched down to make it 17-10 at half-time.

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 "touch down"?
"touch down" is spelled T-O-U-C-H- -D-O-W-N.
What does "touch down" mean?
As a verb, "touch down" means: To land an aircraft or spacecraft.
What language does "touch down" come from?
"touch down" is a English word. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for this and other words across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German on PlainSpell.
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