without fail
"without-fail" is a 11-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“without fail” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a prep_phrase. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 12
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Certainly; by all means; as a matter of importance.
Corpus desk
Index EN-without-fail · without fail · English
without fail · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 12 letters
- VOW-5 5 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 | without fail |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Prep_phrase |
| Letters | 12 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “without fail” in English
Rare enough to double-check
without fail is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as aprep_phrase. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for without fail, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Our source data has no etymology on file for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct English form is without fail, spelled W-I-T-H-O-U-T- -F-A-I-L.
Definition
- 1Certainly; by all means; as a matter of importance.
- 2Inevitably.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how without fail appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
You will report to the police every week without fail.
And David enquired at the Lord, saying, Shall I pursue after this troop? shall I overtake them? And he answered him, Pursue: for thou shalt surely overtake them, and without fail recover all.
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.