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PlainSpell

dish

/dɪʃ/noun, verb

dish is spelled D-I-S-H: 4 letters and one syllable. It appears 16 times per million words in written English, the 5,025th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a noun, dish means “A vessel such as a plate for holding or serving food, often flat with a depressed region in the middle” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of dish is dishes.

How many letters and syllables are in dish?

Letters4: D-I-S-H
Syllables1 (from its American pronunciation)
In writing16 times per million words; the 5,025th most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searchednone measured in search
Same letters

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); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.

How common is dish?

Dish appears 16 times per million words in written English, the 5,025th 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 dish?

  • /dɪʃ/

Dish has one syllable (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-dish.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

What rhymes with dish?

No other word on PlainSpell ends in the same sounds as dish.

Spelled with the same letters in another order: shid.

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 dish

  • dishes plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • dishing participle, present
  • dished participle, past

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

What does dish mean?

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

noun

  1. 1

    A vessel such as a plate for holding or serving food, often flat with a depressed region in the middle.

  2. 2

    The contents of such a vessel.

    a dish of stew

  3. 3

    A specific type of prepared food.

    a vegetable dish

  4. 4

    Tableware (including cutlery, etc, as well as crockery) that is to be or is being washed after being used to prepare, serve and eat a meal.

    It's your turn to wash the dishes.

  5. 5

    A type of antenna with a similar shape to a plate or bowl.

    satellite dish

  6. 6

    datedinformalSomething that fits someone's tastes, interests, or abilities.

    Going to the club is not my dish.

  7. 7

    slangA sexually attractive person.

    quite a dish

  8. 8

    datedThe state of being concave, like a dish, or the degree of such concavity.

    the dish of a wheel

verb

  1. 1

    To put in a dish or dishes; serve, usually food.

  2. 2

    informalslangTo gossip; to relay information about the personal situation of another.

  3. 3

    slangTo insult, speak ill of.

  4. 4

    To make concave, or depress in the middle, like a dish.

    to dish a wheel by inclining the spokes

  5. 5

    archaicslangTo frustrate; to beat; to outwit or defeat.

noun

as DISH
  1. 1

    Abbreviation of diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis.

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

Dish in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchassiette, plat (vessel for holding/serving food), mets (specific type of food), vaisselle (tableware to be/being washed)
GermanTeller, Schüssel (vessel for holding/serving food), Geschirr (tableware to be/being washed), Gericht, Speise (contents of such a vessel)
Portugueseprato, louça (vessel for holding/serving food), parabólica (type of antenna)
Spanishvajilla (vessel for holding/serving food), platillo (specific type of food), loza (tableware to be/being washed), plato (contents of such a vessel)

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 dish come from?

From Middle English dissh, disch, from Old English disċ (“plate; bowl; dish”), from Proto-West Germanic *disk (“table; dish”) (whence also Proto-Slavic *dъska, whence Bulgarian дъска́ (dăská), Polish deska, Russian доска́ (doská)), Russian чан (čan)) from Latin discus. Doublet of dais, desk, disc, discus, disk, and diskos.

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

What to look up after dish