water down
"water-down" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“water 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 dilute with water; to add water to.
Corpus desk
Index EN-water-down · water down · English
water 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 "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.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | water down |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 10 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “water down” in English
Rare enough to double-check
water down is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 4 senses are on record.
water down has no tracked misspelling variants, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so its spelling is best read as a straightforward mapping from sound to letter. The correct English form is water down, spelled W-A-T-E-R- -D-O-W-N.
Definition
- 1To dilute with water; to add water to.
- 2To make weaker, less effective.
- 3To simplify or oversimplify; to make easier; to make less difficult.
- 4To make less restrictive; to make more lenient.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how water down appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
You need to water down the lemonade a bit more to make it less sweet, dear.
"Scaling back its ambition further, at this stage, will just mean the economic and social benefit of HS2 for communities across the UK is further watered down. Our national infrastructure should not become a political football."
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.