ellipsoid
/ɪˈlɪp.sɔɪd/noun, adjective
ellipsoid is spelled E-L-L-I-P-S-O-I-D. The wrong spelling people search most is elliptoid: about 20 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 41 of all searches for the word. Ellipsoid is a noun meaning “A surface, all of whose cross sections are elliptic or circular (including the sphere), that generalises the…”. The plural of ellipsoid is ellipsoids.
How many letters and syllables are in ellipsoid?
| Letters | 9: E-L-L-I-P-S-O-I-D |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 3 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | about once in every 4 million words; the 60,074th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, elliptoid, about 20 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 ellipsoid?
Ellipsoid is spelled E-L-L-I-P-S-O-I-D. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 42 of the searches for ellipsoid 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 ellipsoid?
Ellipsoid appears about once in every 4 million words in written English, the 60,074th 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 ellipsoid?
- UK /ɪˈlɪp.sɔɪd/
- US /ɪˈlɪp.sɔɪd/
- US /əˈlɪp.sɔɪd/
Ellipsoid 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: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Qwertygiy-ellipsoid.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of ellipsoid
- ellipsoids plural
- more ellipsoid comparative
- most ellipsoid superlative
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does ellipsoid mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
A surface, all of whose cross sections are elliptic or circular (including the sphere), that generalises the ellipse and in Cartesian coordinates (x, y, z) is a quadric with equation x²/a² + y²/b² + z²/c² = 1.
- 2
Such a surface used as a model of the shape of the earth.
Here the geoid is thirty meters below the ellipsoid.
adjective
- 1
Shaped like an ellipse; elliptical.
- 2
Of or pertaining to an ellipse; elliptic.
- 3
Having the tridimensional shape of an ellipse rotated on its long axis.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Ellipsoid in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense surface all of whose cross sections are elliptic or circular:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | ellipsoïde |
| German | Ellipsoid, Ellipsoide |
| Portuguese | elipsoide |
| Spanish | elipsoide |
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 ellipsoid come from?
From ellipse + -oid.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).