census
/ˈsɛnsəs/noun, verb
census is spelled C-E-N-S-U-S. The wrong spelling people search most is cencus: about 250 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 30 of all searches for the word. Census is a noun meaning “An official count or enumeration of members of a population (not necessarily human), usually residents or…”. The plural of census is censuses or censusses.
How many letters and syllables are in census?
| Letters | 6: C-E-N-S-U-S |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 2 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 15 times per million words; the 5,206th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, cencus, about 250 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 census?
Census is spelled C-E-N-S-U-S. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 30 of the searches for census 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 census?
Census appears 15 times per million words in written English, the 5,206th 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 census?
- UK /ˈsɛnsəs/
Census has 2 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: En-us-census.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of census
- censuses plural, present, singular, he/she/it
- censusses plural, present, singular, he/she/it
- censusing participle, present
- censussing participle, present
- censused participle, past
- censussed participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does census mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
An official count or enumeration of members of a population (not necessarily human), usually residents or citizens in a particular region, often done at regular intervals.
- 2
The people being treated in a healthcare facility, clinic or program.
- 3
Count, tally.
- 4
A type of tax levied by feudal lords on peasants.
- 5
A count of the number of individual patterns within a larger pattern, most often the ash of a soup or a methuselah.
verb
- 1
To conduct a census on.
- 2
To collect a census.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Census in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense official count of members of a population:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | recensement, recensement de la population |
| German | Zensus, Volkszählung, Befragung, Bevölkerungszählung, Zählung |
| Portuguese | censo, recenseamento, censo demográfico |
| Spanish | censo |
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 census come from?
Borrowed from Latin cēnsus, from cēnseō. See censor.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).