dilemma
/daɪˈlɛmə/noun
dilemma is spelled D-I-L-E-M-M-A. The wrong spelling people search most is dilemna: about 270 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 15 of all searches for the word. Dilemma is a noun meaning “A circumstance in which a choice must be made between two or more alternatives that seem equally undesirable”. The plural of dilemma is dilemmas or dilemmata.
How do you spell dilemma?
Dilemma is spelled D-I-L-E-M-M-A. 2 wrong spellings are searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 10 of the searches for dilemma 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.
What does dilemma mean?
noun
- 1
A circumstance in which a choice must be made between two or more alternatives that seem equally undesirable.
- 2
Any difficult circumstance or problem.
- 3
A type of syllogism of the form "if A is true then B is true; if C is true then D is true; either A or C is true; therefore either B or D is true".
- 4
Offering to an opponent a choice between two (equally unfavorable) alternatives.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce dilemma?
- US /daɪˈlɛmə/
- US /dɪˈlɛmə/
- Australia /dɑeˈlemə/
Dilemma has 3 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-dilemma.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of dilemma
- dilemmas plural
- dilemmata plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is dilemma?
Dilemma appears 5.4 times per million words in written English, the 10,680th 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).
Dilemma in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense circumstance in which a choice must be made between two alternatives:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | dilemme |
| German | Dilemma |
| Portuguese | dilema |
| Spanish | dilema, disyuntiva |
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 dilemma come from?
First attested 1523, from Late Latin dilemma, from Ancient Greek δίλημμα (dílēmma, “ambiguous proposition”), from δι- (di-, “having two of”) + λῆμμα (lêmma, “premise, proposition”), equivalent to di- + lemma.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).