antiknock
adjective, noun
antiknock is an adjective meaning “Of an additive added to petroleum/gasoline to reduce the occurrence of engine knock” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled A-N-T-I-K-N-O-C-K and has 3 syllables, and it appears about once in every 76 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does antiknock mean?
adjective
- 1
Of an additive added to petroleum/gasoline to reduce the occurrence of engine knock.
noun
- 1
Such a substance, usually tetraethyl lead (also MMT, MTBE and ethanol).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce antiknock?
- US
Antiknock 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)-Wodencafe-antiknock.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of antiknock
- anti-knock
- antiknocks plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is antiknock?
Antiknock appears about once in every 76 million words in written English, the 275,970th 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).
Antiknock in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense reducing the occurrence of engine knock:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| Portuguese | antidetonante |
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 antiknock come from?
From anti- + knock.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).