compersion
/kəmˈpɜːʒn̩/
"compersion" is a 10-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“compersion” is outside the top-ranked English vocabulary, used as a noun - the kind of word writers most often double-check.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 10
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Vicarious joy associated with seeing one's partner have a joyful romantic or sexual relationship with another person.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | compersion |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /kəmˈpɜːʒn̩/ |
| Letters | 10 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “compersion” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for compersion is 10 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /kəmˈpɜːʒn̩/. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader. Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for compersion, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. This entry stands alone in our confusable dataset, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
Etymologically, the entry records: Coined in the early 1990s by a group of members of the Kerista Commune, a polyamorous group based in San Francisco, California, U.S.A., in existence between 1956 and 1991, apparently randomly using an alphabet board (similar to a Ouija board), with -ion (su… The correct English form is compersion, spelled C-O-M-P-E-R-S-I-O-N.
Definition
- 1Vicarious joy associated with seeing one's partner have a joyful romantic or sexual relationship with another person.
- 2The feeling of joy one has experiencing another's joy, such as in witnessing a toddler's joy and feeling joy in response.
Etymology
Coined in the early 1990s by a group of members of the Kerista Commune, a polyamorous group based in San Francisco, California, U.S.A., in existence between 1956 and 1991, apparently randomly using an alphabet board (similar to a Ouija board), with -ion (suffix forming nouns). The hypothesis that the word is derived from French compère (“partner”) + English -sion (a variant of -tion (suffix forming nouns)), based on an earlier use of French compérage by the French anthropologist and ethnologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009) to denote the practice of brothers-in-law sharing wives observed among Tupi people of the Brazilian Amazon, is less plausible: a website run by former members of the community states that neither the word compérage nor Lévi-Strauss’s work was known to them at the time, and the formation of the word in this way does not correspond to any known morphological process.
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “compersion”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is C-O-M-P-E-R-S-I-O-N - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /kəmˈpɜːʒn̩/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.