ferm

/fɜː(ɹ)m/obsolete

ferm is a noun meaning “rent for a farm” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-E-R-M and has one syllable, and it appears about once in every 17 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of ferm is ferms.

What does ferm mean?

noun

1
obsoleterent for a farm
He let his land to ferm.
2
obsoletea farm
3
obsoletean abode or place of residence

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

How do you pronounce ferm?

/fɜː(ɹ)m/

Ferm has one syllable (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-ferm.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

How common is ferm?

Ferm appears about once in every 17 million words in written English, the 122,704th most frequent word form in the list.

ferm0.0010.010.11101001,00010,000

rarerper million words of written Englishmore common

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Words people confuse with ferm

Sounds like: firm (Wiktionary's homophone list; some hold only in some accents).

Sources: English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).

Where does ferm come from?

See farm.

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