aunt
/ɑːnt/noun
aunt is spelled A-U-N-T: 4 letters and one syllable. It appears 14 times per million words in written English, the 5,496th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). People search “ant vs aunt” about 590 times a month (Google, United States). As a noun, aunt means “The sister or sister-in-law of one’s parent” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of aunt is aunts.
How many letters and syllables are in aunt?
| Letters | 4: A-U-N-T |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 1 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 14 times per million words; the 5,496th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in search |
| Pairs people search | |
| Sounds like | |
| Same letters |
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); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How common is aunt?
Aunt appears 14 times per million words in written English, the 5,496th 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 aunt?
- /ɑːnt/
- /ænt/
- /ant/
Aunt has one syllable (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: En-us-aunt-2.ogg, En-us-aunt.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Words people confuse with aunt
Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).
Sounds like: aren't (Wiktionary's homophone list; some hold only in some accents).
Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).
What rhymes with aunt?
No other word on PlainSpell ends in the same sounds as aunt.
Spelled with the same letters in another order: tuna, tuan.
Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).
Forms of aunt
- aunts plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does aunt mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
The sister or sister-in-law of one’s parent.
- 2
The female cousin or cousin-in-law of one’s parent.
- 3
A woman of an older generation than oneself, especially a friend of one's parents, by means of fictive kin.
- 4
obsoleteAny elderly woman.
- 5
obsoleteA procuress or bawd.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Aunt in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense a parent's sister or sister-in-law:
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 aunt come from?
From Middle English aunte, from Anglo-Norman aunte, from Old French ante, from Latin amita (“father's sister”). Displaced native Middle English modrie (“aunt”) (from Old English mōdriġe (“maternal aunt”); compare Old English faþu, faþe (“paternal aunt”)). Notes on pronunciation and spelling The digraph ⟨au⟩ representing /æ ~ ɑː/ (rather than /ɔː/) is irregular.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).