up to snuff
"up-to-snuff" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“up to snuff” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as an adjective. 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) - Adequate; of acceptable quality; satisfying an appropriate standard.
Corpus desk
Index EN-up-to-snuff · up to snuff · English
up to snuff · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 11 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "U" 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 | up to snuff |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 11 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “up to snuff” in English
Rare enough to double-check
up to snuff is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anadjective. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
up to snuff doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.
No documented word history exists for this headword, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct English form is up to snuff, spelled U-P- -T-O- -S-N-U-F-F.
Definition
- 1Adequate; of acceptable quality; satisfying an appropriate standard.
- 2Mentally alert, shrewd, savvy.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how up to snuff appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
About 40% of U.S. counties lack full-time public-health service. . . . Many registered hospitals are not up to snuff.
"Dombey," says the Major, with appropriate action, "that is the hand of Joseph Bagstock: of plain old Joey B. . . . a rough and tough, and possibly an up-to-snuff, old vagabond."
Synonyms
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.