entropy
/ˈɛntɹəpi/noun
entropy is spelled E-N-T-R-O-P-Y: 7 letters and 3 syllables. It appears 1.9 times per million words in written English, the 20,101st most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a noun, entropy means “A measure of the disorder directly proportional to the natural logarithm of the number of microstates yielding an equivalent thermodynamic macrostate” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of entropy is entropies.
How many letters and syllables are in entropy?
| Letters | 7: E-N-T-R-O-P-Y |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 3 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 1.9 times per million words; the 20,101st most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in search |
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).
How common is entropy?
Entropy appears 1.9 times per million words in written English, the 20,101st 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 entropy?
- /ˈɛntɹəpi/
Entropy 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-entropy.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of entropy
- entropies plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does entropy mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
A measure of the disorder directly proportional to the natural logarithm of the number of microstates yielding an equivalent thermodynamic macrostate.
- 2
Shannon entropy
- 3
A measure of the amount of energy in a physical system that cannot be used to do work.
Near-synonym: unavailable energy
- 4
The capacity factor for thermal energy that is hidden with respect to temperature.
- 5
The dispersal of energy; how much energy is spread out in a process, or how widely spread out it becomes, at a specific temperature.
- 6
A measure of the amount of information and noise present in a signal.
- 7
The tendency of a system that is left to itself to descend into chaos.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Entropy in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense term in thermodynamics:
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 entropy come from?
First attested in 1867, as the translation of German Entropie, coined in 1865 by Rudolph Clausius in analogy to Energie (“energy”), replacing the root of Ancient Greek ἔργον (érgon, “work”) by Ancient Greek τροπή (tropḗ, “transformation”)).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).