emphasis
/ˈɛmfəsɪs/noun
emphasis is spelled E-M-P-H-A-S-I-S. The wrong spelling people search most is emphsis: about 10 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 222 of all searches for the word. Emphasis is a noun meaning “Special weight or forcefulness given to something considered important”. The plural of emphasis is emphases.
How many letters and syllables are in emphasis?
| Letters | 8: E-M-P-H-A-S-I-S |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 3 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 15 times per million words; the 5,206th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, emphsis, about 10 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 emphasis?
Emphasis is spelled E-M-P-H-A-S-I-S. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 220 of the searches for emphasis 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 emphasis?
Emphasis appears 15 times per million words in written English, the 5,206th 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 emphasis?
- /ˈɛmfəsɪs/
- [ˈɛɱfəsɪs]
- [ˈeɱfəsɪs]
Emphasis 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-emphasis.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of emphasis
- emphases plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does emphasis mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
Special weight or forcefulness given to something considered important.
He paused for emphasis before saying who had won.
- 2
Special attention or prominence given to something.
Anglia TV's emphasis is on Norwich and district.
- 3
Prominence given to a syllable or words, by raising the voice or printing in italic or underlined type.
He used a yellow highlighter to indicate where to give emphasis in his speech.
- 4
The phonetic or phonological feature that distinguishes emphatic consonants from other consonants.
- 5
The use of boldface, italics, or other such formatting to highlight text.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Emphasis in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | accent, emphase |
| German | Nachdruck, Eindringlichkeit, Emphase , Schwerpunkt, Hauptaugenmerk, Fokus |
| Portuguese | ênfase |
| Spanish | énfasis, hincapié |
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 emphasis come from?
From Latin emphasis, from Ancient Greek ἔμφασις (émphasis, “significance”), from ἐμφαίνω (emphaínō, “to present; to indicate”), from ἐν- (en-, “in”) + φαίνω (phaínō, “to show”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).