Impatient or inpatient?
impatient is an adjective meaning “Restless, short of temper, and intolerant of delays”; inpatient is a noun meaning “A patient whose treatment requires at least one night's residence in a…”. Use impatient as an adjective and inpatient as a noun (inpatient is also an adjective: “Of treatment, requiring at least one night's residence in a…”). In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) impatient is about 2.5 times as common as inpatient.
What is the difference between impatient and inpatient?
| impatient | inpatient | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | adjective | noun, adjective |
| Meaning | Restless, short of temper, and intolerant of delays Anxious and eager, especially to begin or have something | A patient whose treatment requires at least one night's residence in a hospital; a hospitalized patient Of treatment, requiring at least one night's residence in a hospital |
| Example | She dances when she becomes impatient | none recorded |
| Forms | none | inpatients |
| Pronunciation | /ɪmˈpeɪʃənt/ | not recorded |
| In writing | 3.5 times per million words | 1.4 times per million words |
Sources: impatient and inpatient 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 impatient and inpatient
impatient
- 1
Restless, short of temper, and intolerant of delays
She dances when she becomes impatient
- 2
Anxious and eager, especially to begin or have something
- 3
Prompted by, or exhibiting, impatience
impatient speeches or replies
inpatient
- 1
A patient whose treatment requires at least one night's residence in a hospital; a hospitalized patient
- 2
Of treatment, requiring at least one night's residence in a hospital
- 3
Alternative spelling of impatient
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, impatient or inpatient?
impatient appears 3.5 times per million words; inpatient 1.4 times per million words.
impatient 3.5 times per million wordsinpatient 1.4 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 impatient vs inpatient?
“impatient vs inpatient” is searched about 320 times a month on Google and 10 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“inpatient vs impatient”, “impatient or inpatient”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.