celt
/sɛlt/noun
celt is a noun meaning “A prehistoric chisel-bladed tool” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled C-E-L-T and has one syllable, and it appears about once in every 5 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of celt is celts.
What does celt mean?
noun
- 1
A prehistoric chisel-bladed tool.
noun
- 1
A member of one of the ancient peoples of Western Europe called Celtae by the Romans.
- 2
A member of any of the (modern, Celtic) peoples who speak Celtic languages.
adjective
- 1
Synonym of Celtic.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce celt?
- /sɛlt/
Celt 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-Celt.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of celt
- celts plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is celt?
Celt appears about once in every 5 million words in written English, the 65,913th 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).
Celt in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense ancient:
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 celt come from?
From Latin celtis (“chisel”), very probably a ghost word originating from a copyist's error in the Vulgate Bible, but taken as genuine and subsequently used in Medieval Latin.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).