Skip to main content
PlainSpell

difference

diffe·rence/ˈdɪf.(ə.)ɹəns/noun, verb

difference is spelled D-I-F-F-E-R-E-N-C-E, 2 syllables: diffe·rence. The wrong spelling people search most is differance: about 210 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 71 of all searches for the word. Difference is a noun meaning “The quality of being different”. The plural of difference is differences.

How many letters and syllables are in difference?

Letters10: D-I-F-F-E-R-E-N-C-E
Syllables2: diffe·rence
In writing102 times per million words; the 1,048th most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searched3; the most searched, differance, about 210 Bing searches a month (all of them)

Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation; 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 difference?

Difference is spelled D-I-F-F-E-R-E-N-C-E. 3 wrong spellings are searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 35 of the searches for difference in either form.

differencethe right spelling14,740 searches a month
differancea in place of e210 searches a month
diffrencea missing e140 searches a month
differncea missing e80 searches a month

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 difference?

Difference appears 102 times per million words in written English, the 1,048th 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 difference?

  • UK /ˈdɪf.(ə.)ɹəns/
  • US /ˈdɪf.(ə.)ɹəns/
  • Australia /ˈdɪf.(ə.)ɹəns/

Difference has 2 syllables, split diffe·rence in writing.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-difference.ogg, En-au-difference.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of difference

  • differences plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • differencing participle, present
  • differenced participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What does difference mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

noun

  1. 1

    The quality of being different.

    You need to learn to be more tolerant of difference.

  2. 2

    A characteristic of something that makes it different from something else.

    There are three differences between these two pictures.

  3. 3

    A disagreement or argument.

    We have our little differences, but we are firm friends.

  4. 4

    Significant change in or effect on a situation or state.

    It just won't make much difference to me.

  5. 5

    The result of a subtraction; sometimes the absolute value of this result.

    The difference between 3 and 21 is 18.

  6. 6

    obsoleteChoice; preference.

  7. 7

    An addition to a coat of arms to distinguish two people's bearings which would otherwise be the same. See augmentation and cadency.

  8. 8

    The quality or attribute which is added to those of the genus to constitute a species; a differentia.

verb

  1. 1

    obsoleteTo distinguish or differentiate.

  2. 2

    to modify a heraldic emblem so as to distinguish one branch of a house from another

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you abbreviate difference?

Wiktionary records 2 abbreviations of difference: diff, diff..

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Difference in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchdifférence (quality of being different), différend (disagreement or argument about something…)
GermanUnterschied, Unterscheidung, Andersartigkeit, Anderssein (quality of being different), Differenz (characteristic of something that makes it…), differenzieren (to distinguish or differentiate)
Portuguesediferença (quality of being different), diferenciar (to distinguish or differentiate), resto (arithmetic: result of a subtraction)
Spanishdiferencia, discrimen (quality of being different)

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 difference come from?

From Middle English difference, from Old French difference, from Latin differentia (“difference”), from differēns (“different”

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What to look up after difference