authorities
noun
authorities is spelled A-U-T-H-O-R-I-T-I-E-S. The wrong spelling people search most is authorites: about 20 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 23 of all searches for the word. Authorities is a noun meaning “The bodies that have political or administrative power and control in a particular sphere”.
How many letters and syllables are in authorities?
| Letters | 11: A-U-T-H-O-R-I-T-I-E-S |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 4 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 43 times per million words; the 2,339th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, authorites, about 20 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
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).
How do you spell authorities?
Authorities is spelled A-U-T-H-O-R-I-T-I-E-S. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 24 of the searches for authorities in either form.
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). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is authorities?
Authorities appears 43 times per million words in written English, the 2,339th 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 authorities?
- US
Authorities has 4 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-authorities.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
What does authorities mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
The bodies that have political or administrative power and control in a particular sphere.
- 2
The bodies that enforce law and order or provide a public service.
- 3
plural of authority
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Authorities in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense all senses:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | autorités |
| German | Behörden |
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.