reign

/ɹeɪ̯n/noun, verb

reign is a noun meaning “The exercise of sovereign power” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled R-E-I-G-N and has one syllable (reign), and it appears 12 times per million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data, counting Reign, the name). The plural of reign is reigns.

What does reign mean?

noun

1
The exercise of sovereign power.
England prospered under Elizabeth I's reign.
2
The period during which a monarch rules.
The reign of Victoria was a long one.
3
The territory or sphere over which a kingdom; empire; realm; dominion, etc. is ruled.

verb

1
To exercise sovereign power, to rule as a monarch.
He reigned in an autocratic manner.
2
nonstandardrareTo reign over (a country)
3
To be the winner of the most recent iteration of a competition.
4
To be a dominant quality of a place or situation; to prevail, predominate, rule.
Silence reigned.

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

How do you pronounce reign?

/ɹeɪ̯n/
US /ɹeɪ̯n/
Australia /ɹæɪ̯n/

Reign has one syllable, split reign in writing.

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

Forms of reign

reigns plural, present, singular, he/she/it
reigning participle, present
reigned participle, past

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

How common is reign?

Reign appears 12 times per million words in written English, the 6,347th most frequent word form in the list. The list counts every capitalisation together, so this includes Reign, the name.

reign0.0010.010.11101001,00010,000

rarerper million words of written Englishmore common

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

Words people confuse with reign

Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).

reign vs rein2,900 G

rain vs reign90 G

Also written: rain.

Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).

Reign in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

Language	Words
French	règne (the exercise of sovereign power), régner (exercise sovereign power)
German	Herrschaft, Regentschaft (the exercise of sovereign power), herrschen, regieren (exercise sovereign power), dominieren (be a dominant quality of a place or situation)
Portuguese	reinado (the exercise of sovereign power), reinar (exercise sovereign power)
Spanish	reinado (the exercise of sovereign power), reinar (exercise sovereign power), imperar (be a dominant quality of a place or situation)

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.