Envelop or envelope?
envelop is a verb meaning “To surround, enclose or enfold”; envelope is a noun meaning “A paper or cardboard wrapper used to enclose small, flat items, especially…”. Use envelop as a verb and envelope as a noun. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) envelope is about 24 times as common as envelop.
What is the difference between envelop and envelope?
| envelop | envelope | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | verb | noun, verb |
| Meaning | To surround, enclose or enfold | A paper or cardboard wrapper used to enclose small, flat items, especially letters, for mailing Something that envelops; a wrapping |
| Example | none recorded | none recorded |
| Forms | envelops, enveloping, enveloped | envelopes |
| Pronunciation | /ɛnˈvɛləp/ | /ˈɛnvə(ˌ)ləʊp/ /ˈɒnvə(ˌ)ləʊp/ /ˈɒnvləʊp/ |
| In writing | about once in every 3 million words | 7.2 times per million words |
Sources: envelop and envelope 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 envelop and envelope
envelop
- 1
To surround, enclose or enfold
envelope
- 1
A paper or cardboard wrapper used to enclose small, flat items, especially letters, for mailing
- 2
Something that envelops; a wrapping
- 3
A bag containing the lifting gas of a balloon or airship; fabric that encloses the gas-bags of an airship
- 4
A mathematical curve, surface, or higher-dimensional object that is the tangent to a given family of lines, curves, surfaces, or higher-dimensional objects
- 5
A curve that bounds another curve or set of curves, as the modulation envelope of an amplitude-modulated carrier wave in electronics
- 6
The shape of a sound, which may be controlled by a synthesizer or sampler
- 7
The information used for routing a message that is transmitted with the message but not part of its contents
- 8
An enclosing structure or cover, such as a membrane; a space between two membranes
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, envelop or envelope?
envelop appears about once in every 3 million words; envelope 7.2 times per million words.
envelop about once in every 3 million wordsenvelope 7.2 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 envelop vs envelope?
“envelop vs envelope” is searched about 720 times a month on Google and 60 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“envelope vs envelop”, “envelop or envelope”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.