conscience
/ˈkɑn.ʃəns/noun
conscience is spelled C-O-N-S-C-I-E-N-C-E. The wrong spelling people search most is concience: about 190 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 33 of all searches for the word. Conscience is a noun meaning “The ethical or moral sense of right and wrong, chiefly as it affects a person’s own behaviour and forms their…”. The plural of conscience is consciences.
How many letters and syllables are in conscience?
| Letters | 10: C-O-N-S-C-I-E-N-C-E |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 2 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 9.1 times per million words; the 7,553rd most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, concience, about 190 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
| Pairs people search |
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 conscience?
Conscience is spelled C-O-N-S-C-I-E-N-C-E. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 33 of the searches for conscience 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 conscience?
Conscience appears 9.1 times per million words in written English, the 7,553rd 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 conscience?
- UK /ˈkɒn.ʃəns/
- UK /ˈkɒn.tʃəns/
- US /ˈkɑn.ʃəns/
Conscience 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-conscience.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Words people confuse with conscience
Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).
Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).
Forms of conscience
- consciences plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does conscience mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
The ethical or moral sense of right and wrong, chiefly as it affects a person’s own behaviour and forms their attitude to their past actions.
Your conscience is your highest authority.
- 2
A personification of the moral sense of right and wrong, usually in the form of a person, a being or merely a voice that gives moral lessons and advices.
- 3
obsoleteConsciousness; thinking; awareness, especially self-awareness.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Conscience in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense moral sense:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | conscience |
| German | Gewissen |
| Portuguese | consciência |
| Spanish | conciencia |
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 conscience come from?
From Middle English conscience, from Old French conscience, from Latin conscientia (“knowledge within oneself”) (a calque of Ancient Greek σῠνείδησῐς (sŭneídēsĭs)), from consciens, present participle of conscire (“to know, to be conscious (of wrong)”), from com- (“together”) + scire (“to know”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).