dementia
/dɪˈmɛnʃə/noun
dementia is spelled D-E-M-E-N-T-I-A. The wrong spelling people search most is dimentia: about 1,000 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 21 of all searches for the word. Dementia is a noun meaning “A progressive decline in cognitive function due to damage or disease in the brain beyond what might be…”. The plural of dementia is dementias or dementiae.
How many letters and syllables are in dementia?
| Letters | 8: D-E-M-E-N-T-I-A |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 4 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 5.8 times per million words; the 10,196th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 2; the most searched, dimentia, about 1,000 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 dementia?
Dementia is spelled D-E-M-E-N-T-I-A. 2 wrong spellings are searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 15 of the searches for dementia 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 dementia?
Dementia appears 5.8 times per million words in written English, the 10,196th 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 dementia?
- /dɪˈmɛnʃə/
Dementia 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)-I_learned_some_phrases-dementia.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of dementia
- dementias plural
- dementiae plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does dementia mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
A progressive decline in cognitive function due to damage or disease in the brain beyond what might be expected from normal aging. Areas particularly affected include memory, attention, judgement, language and problem solving.
- 2
Madness or insanity.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Dementia in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | démence |
| German | Demenz |
| Portuguese | demência , insanidade, loucura |
| Spanish | demencia , locura |
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 dementia come from?
Borrowed from Latin dēmentia.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).