Skip to main content
PlainSpell

atheist

a·the·ist/ˈeɪ.θi.ɪst/noun, adjective, verb

atheist is spelled A-T-H-E-I-S-T, 3 syllables: a·the·ist. The wrong spelling people search most is athiest: about 560 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 2 in 10 of all searches for the word. Atheist is a noun meaning “A person who does not believe in deities or gods”. The plural of atheist is atheists.

How do you spell atheist?

Atheist is spelled A-T-H-E-I-S-T. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 2 in 10 of the searches for atheist in either form.

atheistthe right spelling2,660 searches a month
athieste and i swapped560 searches a month

Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.

What does atheist mean?

noun

  1. 1

    A person who does not believe in deities or gods.

  2. 2

    A person who is certain that no deities exist or who thinks that the existence of deities can be disproven.

  3. 3

    A person who doubts the existence of deities (therefore, an agnostic may be considered an atheist).

  4. 4

    Any person lacking belief in deities (including children who are unaware of religion).

  5. 5

    A person who does not believe in a particular deity (but may believe in another deity).

  6. 6

    proscribedA person who does not believe in any religion (not even a religion without gods); a nonreligious person.

adjective

  1. 1

    Of or relating to atheists or atheism; atheistic.

verb

  1. 1

    rareTo make someone an atheist.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce atheist?

  • /ˈeɪ.θi.ɪst/
  • /ˈeɪ.θi.əst/

Atheist has 3 syllables, split a·the·ist in writing.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-atheist.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of atheist

  • atheists plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • more atheist comparative
  • most atheist superlative
  • atheisting participle, present
  • atheisted participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is atheist?

Atheist appears 4.2 times per million words in written English, the 12,578th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Atheist in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchathée (a person who believes with certainty that no…), athéiste (a person who doubts the existence of deities –…)
GermanAtheist, Atheistin, Gottesleugner, Gottesleugnerin, Gottloser, Gottlose (a person who believes with certainty that no…)
Portugueseateu, ateia, ateísta (a person who believes with certainty that no…)
Spanishateo, atea, ateísta (a person who believes with certainty that no…)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.