anencephaly
/æn.ɪnˈsɛ.fə.lɪ/noun
anencephaly is a noun meaning “A lethal birth defect involving the abscence of a major portion of the brain and parts of the skull are missing; absence of the encephalon” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled A-N-E-N-C-E-P-H-A-L-Y and has 5 syllables, and it appears about once in every 17 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of anencephaly is anencephalies.
What does anencephaly mean?
noun
- 1
A lethal birth defect involving the abscence of a major portion of the brain and parts of the skull are missing; absence of the encephalon.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce anencephaly?
- UK /æn.ɪnˈsɛ.fə.lɪ/
Anencephaly has 5 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).
Forms of anencephaly
- anencephalies plural
- anencephalia
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is anencephaly?
Anencephaly appears about once in every 17 million words in written English, the 124,184th 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).
Anencephaly in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense birth defect involving the absence of the encephalon:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| German | Anenzephalie |
| Portuguese | anencefalia |
| Spanish | anencefalia |
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 anencephaly come from?
Internationalism. Learned borrowing from New Latin anencephalia. By surface analysis, an- + encephaly.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).