Addition or edition?
addition is a noun meaning “The act of adding anything”; edition is a noun meaning “A written work edited and published, as by a certain editor or in a certain…”. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) addition is about 1.6 times as common as edition.
What is the difference between addition and edition?
| addition | edition | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | noun | noun |
| Meaning | The act of adding anything Anything that is added | A written work edited and published, as by a certain editor or in a certain manner, or at a certain time The whole number of copies of a work printed and published at one time |
| Example | The addition of five more items to the agenda will make the meeting unbearably long | She wanted a copy of the Clericotes edition, but had to settle for the 1921 edition. She had never liked abridged editions |
| Forms | additions | editions |
| Pronunciation | /əˈdɪʃ.ən/ | /ɪˈdɪʃ(ə)n/ /ˈe.ɖɪ.ʃən/ |
| In writing | 102 times per million words | 63 times per million words |
Sources: addition and edition in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of addition and edition
addition
- 1
The act of adding anything
The addition of five more items to the agenda will make the meeting unbearably long
- 2
Anything that is added
- 3
The arithmetic operation of adding
- 4
A dot at the right side of a note as an indication that its sound is to be lengthened one half
- 5
A title annexed to a person's name to identify him or her more precisely
- 6
Something added to a coat of arms, as a mark of honour
- 7
an organic reaction where two or more molecules combine to form a larger one (the adduct)
edition
- 1
A written work edited and published, as by a certain editor or in a certain manner, or at a certain time
She wanted a copy of the Clericotes edition, but had to settle for the 1921 edition. She had never liked abridged editions
- 2
The whole number of copies of a work printed and published at one time
The first edition was soon sold
- 3
An instance of the first or second sense
What he had found was a particularly valuable first edition
- 4
A particular instance of an event
The 2014 edition of the Tour de France started in Leeds, Yorkshire
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, addition or edition?
addition appears 102 times per million words; edition 63 times per million words.
addition 102 times per million wordsedition 63 times per million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search addition vs edition?
“addition vs edition” is searched about 1,000 times a month on Google and 20 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“edition vs addition”, “addition or edition”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.