Opossum or possum?
opossum is a noun meaning “Any American marsupial of the family Didelphidae in the order Didelphimorphia”; possum is a noun meaning “A marsupial of several families of the order Diprotodontia, found in Australia…”. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) possum is about 3.0 times as common as opossum.
What is the difference between opossum and possum?
| opossum | possum | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | noun | noun, verb |
| Meaning | Any American marsupial of the family Didelphidae in the order Didelphimorphia | A marsupial of several families of the order Diprotodontia, found in Australia and neighboring islands USAn opossum, a marsupial of the family Didelphidae of the Americas To play possum; to feign sleep, illness, or death |
| Example | none recorded | none recorded |
| Forms | opossums | possums |
| Pronunciation | /əˈpɒsəm/ /əˈpɑsəm/ | /ˈpɒsəm/ |
| In writing | about once in every 3 million words | about once in every 1 million words |
Sources: opossum and possum 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 opossum and possum
opossum
- 1
Any American marsupial of the family Didelphidae in the order Didelphimorphia
possum
- 1
A marsupial of several families of the order Diprotodontia, found in Australia and neighboring islands
- 2
To play possum; to feign sleep, illness, or death
- 3
USAn opossum, a marsupial of the family Didelphidae of the Americas
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, opossum or possum?
opossum appears about once in every 3 million words; possum about once in every 1 million words.
opossum about once in every 3 million wordspossum about once in every 1 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 opossum vs possum?
“opossum vs possum” is searched about 40,500 times a month on Google and 3,440 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“possum vs opossum”, “opossum or possum”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.