Lightening or lightning?
lightening is a noun meaning “The act or result of making something light or lighter”; lightning is a noun meaning “A flash of light produced by short-duration, high-voltage discharge of…”. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) lightning is about 15 times as common as lightening.
What is the difference between lightening and lightning?
| lightening | lightning | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | noun, verb | noun, adjective, verb |
| Meaning | The act or result of making something light or lighter The sensation caused by the descent of the uterus into the pelvic cavity before the onset of labour | A flash of light produced by short-duration, high-voltage discharge of electricity within a cloud, between clouds, or between a cloud and the earth A discharge of this kind Extremely fast or sudden; moving (as if) at the speed of lightning |
| Example | none recorded | Although we did not see the lightning, we did hear the thunder |
| Forms | lightenings | lightnings |
| Pronunciation | /ˈlaɪ.tn̩.ɪŋ/ | /ˈlaɪt.nɪŋ/ [ˈlʌɪ̯ʔ.nɪŋ] |
| In writing | 1.1 times per million words | 17 times per million words |
Sources: lightening and lightning 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 lightening and lightning
lightening
- 1
The act or result of making something light or lighter
- 2
The sensation caused by the descent of the uterus into the pelvic cavity before the onset of labour
- 3
The removal of cargo (especially crude oil) from a vessel in order to reduce its draft
lightning
- 1
A flash of light produced by short-duration, high-voltage discharge of electricity within a cloud, between clouds, or between a cloud and the earth
Although we did not see the lightning, we did hear the thunder
- 2
Extremely fast or sudden; moving (as if) at the speed of lightning
- 3
A discharge of this kind
The lightning was hot enough to melt the sand
- 4
Anything that moves very fast
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, lightening or lightning?
lightening appears 1.1 times per million words; lightning 17 times per million words.
lightening 1.1 times per million wordslightning 17 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 lightening vs lightning?
“lightening vs lightning” is searched about 1,300 times a month on Google and 100 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“lightning vs lightening”, “lightening or lightning”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.