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PlainSpell

rapid

/ˈɹæp.ɪd/adjective, noun

rapid is spelled R-A-P-I-D. The wrong spelling people search most is repid: about 20 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 313 of all searches for the word. Rapid is an adjective meaning “Very swift or quick”.

How do you spell rapid?

Rapid is spelled R-A-P-I-D. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 316 of the searches for rapid in either form.

rapidthe right spelling6,300 searches a month
repide in place of a20 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 rapid mean?

adjective

  1. 1

    Very swift or quick.

    a rapid stream

  2. 2

    Steep, changing altitude quickly. (of a slope)

  3. 3

    Needing only a brief exposure time. (of a lens, plate, film, etc.)

  4. 4

    Violent, severe.

  5. 5

    obsoleteHappy.

noun

  1. 1

    A rough section of a river or stream which is difficult to navigate due to the swift and turbulent motion of the water.

  2. 2

    datedA burst of rapid fire.

  3. 3

    Ellipsis of rapid chess.

adverb

  1. 1

    archaiccolloquialRapidly.

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

How do you pronounce rapid?

  • US /ˈɹæp.ɪd/

Rapid has 2 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

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

Forms of rapid

  • more rapid comparative
  • rapider comparative
  • most rapid superlative
  • rapidest superlative
  • rapids plural

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

How common is rapid?

Rapid appears 24 times per million words in written English, the 3,752nd 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).

Rapid in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchrapide (Very swift or quick), rapides (section of river)
Germanschnell (Very swift or quick), Stromschnelle (section of river)
Portugueserápido (Very swift or quick), corredeira (section of river)
Spanishrápido, raudo (Very swift or quick), rabión (section of river)

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.

Where does rapid come from?

Borrowed from Middle French rapide and its etymon Latin rapidus.

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