assimilation
/əˌsɪməˈleɪʃən/noun
assimilation is spelled A-S-S-I-M-I-L-A-T-I-O-N: 12 letters and 5 syllables. It appears 1.5 times per million words in written English, the 22,651st most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a noun, assimilation means “The act of assimilating or the state of being assimilated” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of assimilation is assimilations.
How many letters and syllables are in assimilation?
| Letters | 12: A-S-S-I-M-I-L-A-T-I-O-N |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 5 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 1.5 times per million words; the 22,651st most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in search |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How common is assimilation?
Assimilation appears 1.5 times per million words in written English, the 22,651st 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).
How do you pronounce assimilation?
- /əˌsɪməˈleɪʃən/
Assimilation 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). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-assimilation.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of assimilation
- assimilations plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does assimilation mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
The act of assimilating or the state of being assimilated.
- 2
The metabolic conversion of nutrients into tissue.
- 3
The absorption of new ideas into an existing cognitive structure.
- 4
A sound change process by which the phonetics of a speech segment becomes more like that of another segment in a word (or at a word boundary), so that a change of phoneme occurs.
- 5
The adoption, by a minority group, of the customs and attitudes of the dominant culture.
After centuries of British cultural assimilation, a majority of Irish now speak English instead of Irish.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Assimilation in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| German | Angleichung, Assimilation |
| Portuguese | assimilação |
| Spanish | asimilación |
| French | assimilation |
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 assimilation come from?
Borrowed from Medieval Latin assimilatio. By surface analysis, assimilate + -ion.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).