wear down
"wear-down" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“wear 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
- 9
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To cause (someone) physical or mental fatigue.
Corpus desk
Index EN-wear-down · wear down · English
wear down · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 9 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 | wear down |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 9 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “wear down” in English
Rare enough to double-check
wear 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.
Zero misspellings are on record for wear down in our index, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.
This entry carries no recorded etymology, so its spelling is best explained by sound-to-letter mapping rather than etymology. The correct English form is wear down, spelled W-E-A-R- -D-O-W-N.
Definition
- 1To cause (someone) physical or mental fatigue.
- 2To eventually persuade or defeat (someone) through persistent effort.
- 3Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see wear, down.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how wear down appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
The eight hour shift in the mine began to wear Tim down after a few months.
(sports) To make the opponent tired after using a strategy while conserving own energy to attack later.
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.