walk away

verb

"walk-away" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

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

Unranked
below top-frequency English
9
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To withdraw from a problematic situation.

Corpus desk

Index EN-walk-away · walk away · English

walk away · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-LONG 9 letters
  • VOW-4 4 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-THIN "W" 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 walk away
PropertyValue
Headwordwalk away
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechVerb
Letters9
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “walk away” in English

walk awaysits 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

walk away is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 5 senses are on record.

The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for walk away, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. This entry stands alone in our confusable dataset, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.

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 walk away, spelled W-A-L-K- -A-W-A-Y.

Definition

  1. 1
    To withdraw from a problematic situation.
  2. 2
    Of an object, to go missing or be stolen.
  3. 3
    To free oneself from a debt such as a mortgage by abandoning the collateral to the lender. To make a strategic default.
  4. 4
    To survive a challenging or dangerous situation without harm.
  5. 5
    Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see walk, away.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

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

  1. Company lawyers told him to walk away from the deal.
  2. Green adds: "Luckily, nobody did walk away. Railtrack stayed with it, so did the government, so did the Strategic Rail Authority.

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 "walk away"?
"walk away" is spelled W-A-L-K- -A-W-A-Y.
What does "walk away" mean?
As a verb, "walk away" means: To withdraw from a problematic situation.
What language does "walk away" come from?
"walk away" 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