captcha
/ˈkæp.t͡ʃə/noun
captcha is spelled C-A-P-T-C-H-A: 7 letters. It appears about once in every 4 million words in written English, the 59,387th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a noun, captcha means “Alternative letter-case form of CAPTCHA” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of captcha is captchas.
How many letters and syllables are in captcha?
| Letters | 7: C-A-P-T-C-H-A |
|---|---|
| In writing | about once in every 4 million words; the 59,387th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in search |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How common is captcha?
Captcha appears about once in every 4 million words in written English, the 59,387th 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 captcha?
- /ˈkæp.t͡ʃə/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of captcha
- captchas plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does captcha mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
Alternative letter-case form of CAPTCHA.
noun
- 1
A computerized test requiring the human user to perform a task deemed to be difficult to automate, such as entering a displayed series of distorted characters or describing images, to demonstrate that they are a human and not a computer program.
noun
- 1
Alternative letter-case form of CAPTCHA.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Captcha in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense computerized test:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | CAPTCHA, Captcha |
| German | Captcha, rarely CAPTCHA |
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 captcha come from?
Coined by a team of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in 2000 as a loose acronym of “completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart”.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).