dyspareunia
/dɪspəˈɹuːnɪə/noun
dyspareunia is a noun meaning “Painful or difficult sexual intercourse, especially in women” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled D-Y-S-P-A-R-E-U-N-I-A, and it appears about once in every 28 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does dyspareunia mean?
noun
- 1
Painful or difficult sexual intercourse, especially in women.
deep dyspareunia
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce dyspareunia?
- UK /dɪspəˈɹuːnɪə/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-dyspareunia.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
How common is dyspareunia?
Dyspareunia appears about once in every 28 million words in written English, the 159,707th 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).
Dyspareunia in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense painful sexual intercourse:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | dyspareunie |
| German | Dyspareunie |
| Spanish | dispareunia |
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 dyspareunia come from?
From dys- + Ancient Greek πάρευνος (páreunos, “lying beside, lying with”) + -ia.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).