emissary
/ˈɛmɪˌsɛɹi/noun
emissary is spelled E-M-I-S-S-A-R-Y. The wrong spelling people search most is emmisary: about 90 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 16 of all searches for the word. Emissary is a noun meaning “An agent sent on a mission to represent the interests of someone else”. The plural of emissary is emissaries.
How many letters and syllables are in emissary?
| Letters | 8: E-M-I-S-S-A-R-Y |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 4 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | about once in every 1 million words; the 35,320th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 2; the most searched, emmisary, about 90 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 emissary?
Emissary is spelled E-M-I-S-S-A-R-Y. 2 wrong spellings are searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 12 of the searches for emissary 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 emissary?
Emissary appears about once in every 1 million words in written English, the 35,320th 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 emissary?
- UK /ˈɛmɪs(ə)ɹi/
- US /ˈɛmɪˌsɛɹi/
Emissary has 4 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)-Vealhurl-emissary.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of emissary
- emissaries plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does emissary mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
An agent sent on a mission to represent the interests of someone else.
- 2
Such an agent spreading a gospel.
Near-synonym: missionary
- 3
A venous channel in the skull.
- 4
An underground channel by which the water of a lake escapes.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Emissary in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense an agent sent on a mission to represent the interests of someone else:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | émissaire |
| German | Emissär, Emissärin, Abgesandter |
| Portuguese | emissário |
| Spanish | emisario, emisaria |
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 emissary come from?
From French émissaire, from Latin emissarius (“agent, scout, spy”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).