comparison
/kəmˈpæɹ.ɪ.sən/noun
comparison is spelled C-O-M-P-A-R-I-S-O-N. The wrong spelling people search most is comparision: about 300 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 17 of all searches for the word. Comparison is a noun meaning “The act of comparing or the state or process of being compared”. The plural of comparison is comparisons.
How many letters and syllables are in comparison?
| Letters | 10: C-O-M-P-A-R-I-S-O-N |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 4 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 32 times per million words; the 2,941st most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 2; the most searched, comparision, about 300 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
| Rhymes with |
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 do you spell comparison?
Comparison is spelled C-O-M-P-A-R-I-S-O-N. 2 wrong spellings are searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 14 of the searches for comparison 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 comparison?
Comparison appears 32 times per million words in written English, the 2,941st 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 comparison?
- UK /kəmˈpæɹ.ɪ.sən/
- /kəmˈpɛɹ.ɪ.sən/
- US /kəmˈpæɹ.ɪ.sən/
Comparison 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)-Naomi_Persephone_Amethyst_(NaomiAmethyst)-comparison.wav, En-us-comparison.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
What rhymes with comparison?
One word on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as comparison from its last stressed vowel (/æɹɪsən/):
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 comparison
- comparisons plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does comparison mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
The act of comparing or the state or process of being compared.
to bring a thing into comparison with another
- 2
An evaluation of the similarities and differences of one or more things relative to some other or each other.
He made a careful comparison of the available products before buying anything.
- 3
With a negation, the state of being similar or alike.
There really is no comparison between the performance of today's computers and those of a decade ago.
- 4
A feature in the morphology or syntax of some languages whereby adjectives and adverbs are inflected to indicate the relative degree of the property they define exhibited by the word or phrase they modify or describe.
In English, adjectives and adverbs have three forms when making a comparison: the plain form "hot", the comparative form "hotter", and the superlative form "hottest".
- 5
That to which, or with which, a thing is compared, as being equal or like; illustration; similitude.
- 6
A simile.
- 7
The faculty of the reflective group which is supposed to perceive resemblances and contrasts.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Comparison in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | comparaison , degrés de comparaison |
| German | Vergleich, Komparation, Vergleichen, Vergleichung , Abgleich |
| Portuguese | comparação |
| Spanish | comparación, comparanza , semejanza |
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 comparison come from?
From Middle English comparisoun, from Old French comparison, from Latin comparātiō, from comparātus, perfect passive participle of comparō.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).