whole cloth
"whole-cloth" is a 10-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“whole cloth” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. 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) - A newly made textile which has not yet been cut.
Corpus desk
Index EN-whole-cloth · whole cloth · English
whole cloth · 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 "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 | whole cloth |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 11 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “whole cloth” in English
Rare enough to double-check
whole cloth is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.
Zero misspellings are on record for whole cloth in our index, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. Our dataset records no confusable match here, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so any spelling logic here comes from how the word's sounds map to letters, not a documented origin story. The correct English form is whole cloth, spelled W-H-O-L-E- -C-L-O-T-H.
Definition
- 1A newly made textile which has not yet been cut.
- 2The fictitious material from which complete fabrications, lies with no basis in truth, are made.
- 3Something made completely new, with no history, and not based on anything else.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how whole cloth appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Mr. Doe's account of the accident was made from whole cloth.
All those tales that came clicking over the wireless of the capture of huge stores of grain and oil were fables out of whole cloth.
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.