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PlainSpell

expedience

/ɛkˈspiː.dɪ.əns/noun

expedience is a noun meaning “The quality of being fit or suitable to cause some desired end or the purpose intended; propriety or advisability under the particular circumstances…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled E-X-P-E-D-I-E-N-C-E and has 4 syllables, and it appears about once in every 13 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of expedience is expediences.

What does expedience mean?

noun

  1. 1

    The quality of being fit or suitable to cause some desired end or the purpose intended; propriety or advisability under the particular circumstances of a case.

    April 11 1690, John Sharp, sermon preached at White-Hall to determine concerning the expedience of actions

  2. 2

    Speed, haste or urgency.

  3. 3

    Something that is expedient.

  4. 4

    obsoleteAn expedition; enterprise; adventure.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce expedience?

  • /ɛkˈspiː.dɪ.əns/

Expedience 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-expedience.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of expedience

  • expediences plural

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is expedience?

Expedience appears about once in every 13 million words in written English, the 107,757th 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).

Expedience in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense speed, haste or urgency:

LanguageWords
Spanishrapidez, urgencia, priesa, prisa

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 expedience come from?

From Middle English expedience, from Old French expedience, from Late Latin expedientia, from Latin expediens.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).