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rebellion

/ɹɪˈbɛl.i.ən/noun

rebellion is a noun meaning “Armed resistance to an established government or ruler” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled R-E-B-E-L-L-I-O-N and has 3 syllables, and it appears 8.7 times per million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of rebellion is rebellions.

What does rebellion mean?

noun

  1. 1

    Armed resistance to an established government or ruler.

    The government is doing its best to stop rebellion in the country.

  2. 2

    Defiance of authority or control; the act of rebelling.

    Having a tattoo was Mathilda's personal rebellion against her parents.

  3. 3

    An organized, forceful subversion of the law of the land in an attempt to replace it with another form of government.

    The army general led a successful rebellion and became president of the country.

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

How do you pronounce rebellion?

  • /ɹɪˈbɛl.i.ən/

Rebellion has 3 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: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-rebellion.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of rebellion

  • rebellions plural

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

How common is rebellion?

Rebellion appears 8.7 times per million words in written English, the 7,797th 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).

Rebellion in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense armed resistance:

LanguageWords
Frenchrébellion
GermanRebellion, Aufstand, Aufruhr
Portugueserebelião, revolta, insurreição
Spanishrebelión, insurrección

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 rebellion come from?

From Middle English rebellioun, rebellion, from Old French rebellion, from Latin rebelliō. Equivalent for rebel + -ion.

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