conscious
/ˈkɑn.ʃəs/adjective, noun
conscious is spelled C-O-N-S-C-I-O-U-S. The wrong spelling people search most is concious: about 1,110 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 2 in 10 of all searches for the word. Conscious is an adjective meaning “Alert, awake; with one's mental faculties active”.
How many letters and syllables are in conscious?
| Letters | 9: C-O-N-S-C-I-O-U-S |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 2 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 15 times per million words; the 5,309th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 2; the most searched, concious, about 1,110 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
| Pairs people search | |
| 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 conscious?
Conscious is spelled C-O-N-S-C-I-O-U-S. 2 wrong spellings are searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 2 in 10 of the searches for conscious 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 conscious?
Conscious appears 15 times per million words in written English, the 5,309th 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 conscious?
- US /ˈkɑn.ʃəs/
- UK /ˈkɒn.ʃəs/
- UK /ˈkɒntʃəs/
Conscious 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-conscious.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Words people confuse with conscious
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).
What rhymes with conscious?
2 words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as conscious from its last stressed vowel (/ɑnʃəs/):
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 conscious
- more conscious comparative
- most conscious superlative
- consciouses plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does conscious mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
adjective
- 1
Alert, awake; with one's mental faculties active.
The noise woke me, but it was another few minutes before I was fully conscious.
- 2
Aware of one's own existence; aware of one's own awareness.
Only highly intelligent beings can be fully conscious.
- 3
Aware of, sensitive to; observing and noticing, or being strongly interested in or concerned about.
I was conscious of a noise behind me. a very class-conscious analysis
- 4
Deliberate, intentional, done with awareness of what one is doing.
- 5
Known or felt personally, internally by a person.
conscious guilt
- 6
rareSelf-conscious, or aware of wrongdoing, feeling guilty.
noun
- 1
The part of the mind that is aware of itself; the consciousness.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you abbreviate conscious?
Wiktionary records one abbreviation of conscious: CAO.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Conscious in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | conscient |
| German | bei Bewusstsein, wach, aufmerksam , bewusst |
| Portuguese | consciente |
| Spanish | consciente |
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 conscious come from?
First use appears c. 1573 in the sense of "aware of wrongdoing".https://web.archive.org/web/20220714064352/https://www.lexico.com/definition/conscious From Latin cōnscius (“conscious, conscious of guilt”), itself from con- (a form of com- (“together”)) + scīre (“to know”) + -us.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What to look up after conscious
- conscience or conscious? the difference
- conscientious or conscious? the difference
- unconscious rhymes with conscious
- subconscious rhymes with conscious
- conscionable the entry before
- consciously the entry after
- English words starting with C the most written first
- The most misspelled English words
- Count the syllables of any word
- Check the spelling of a text