Sulfate or sulphate?
sulfate is a noun meaning “Any salt or ester of sulfuric acid”; sulphate is a noun meaning “Alternative spelling of sulfate”. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) sulfate is about 4.0 times as common as sulphate.
What is the difference between sulfate and sulphate?
| sulfate | sulphate | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | noun, verb | noun, verb |
| Meaning | Any salt or ester of sulfuric acid USTo treat something with sulfuric acid, a sulfate, or with sulfur dioxide To accumulate a deposit of lead sulfate | |
| Example | none recorded | none recorded |
| Forms | sulfates | sulphates |
| Pronunciation | /ˈsʌlfeɪt/ | /ˈsʌl.feɪt/ |
| In writing | 1.5 times per million words | about once in every 3 million words |
Sources: sulfate and sulphate 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 sulfate and sulphate
sulfate
- 1
Any salt or ester of sulfuric acid
- 2
USTo treat something with sulfuric acid, a sulfate, or with sulfur dioxide
- 3
To accumulate a deposit of lead sulfate
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, sulfate or sulphate?
sulfate appears 1.5 times per million words; sulphate about once in every 3 million words.
sulfate 1.5 times per million wordssulphate about once in every 3 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 sulfate vs sulphate?
“sulfate vs sulphate” is searched about 210 times a month on Google and 10 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“sulphate vs sulfate”, “sulfate or sulphate”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.