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PlainSpell

reality

/ɹiˈæləti/noun

reality is a noun meaning “The state of being actual or real; realness” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled R-E-A-L-I-T-Y and has 4 syllables, and it appears 78 times per million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data, counting Reality, the name). The plural of reality is realities.

What does reality mean?

noun

  1. 1

    The state of being actual or real; realness.

    The reality of the crash scene on TV dawned upon him only when he saw the victim was no actor but his friend.

  2. 2

    The real world.

  3. 3

    A real entity, event, or other fact.

    The ultimate reality of life is that it ends in death.

  4. 4

    The entirety of all that is real.

  5. 5

    An individual observer's own subjective perception of that which is real.

  6. 6

    obsoleteLoyalty; devotion.

  7. 7

    obsoleteRealty; real estate.

  8. 8

    Reality television.

    a foray into reality programming

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

How do you pronounce reality?

  • UK /ɹiːˈælɪti/
  • US /ɹiˈæləti/

Reality has 4 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-reality.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of reality

  • realities plural

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

How common is reality?

Reality appears 78 times per million words in written English, the 1,369th most frequent word form in the list. The list counts every capitalisation together, so this includes Reality, the name.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Reality in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchréalité (state of being actual or real), vérité (a real entity, event etc)
GermanWirklichkeit, Realität (state of being actual or real)
Portugueserealidade (state of being actual or real)
Spanishrealidad (state of being actual or real)

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.