flea
/ˈfliː/noun, verb
flea is spelled F-L-E-A: 4 letters and one syllable. It appears 2.6 times per million words in written English, the 16,687th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). People search “flea vs flee” about 90 times a month (Google, United States). As a noun, flea means “A small, wingless, parasitic insect of the order Siphonaptera, renowned for its bloodsucking habits and jumping abilities” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of flea is fleas; Wiktionary also lists fleen (archaic).
How many letters and syllables are in flea?
| Letters | 4: F-L-E-A |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 1 |
| In writing | 2.6 times per million words; the 16,687th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in search |
| Pairs people search | |
| Sounds like | |
| Same letters |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation; 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); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How common is flea?
Flea appears 2.6 times per million words in written English, the 16,687th 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 flea?
- /ˈfliː/
- [ˈflɪi̯]
Flea has one syllable.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-flea.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Words people confuse with flea
Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).
Sounds like: flee (Wiktionary's homophone list; some hold only in some accents).
Also written: flay.
Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).
What rhymes with flea?
No other word on PlainSpell ends in the same sounds as flea.
Spelled with the same letters in another order: leaf, alef, feal.
Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).
Forms of flea
- fleas plural, present, singular, he/she/it
- fleaing participle, present
- fleaed participle, past
- flead participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does flea mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
A small, wingless, parasitic insect of the order Siphonaptera, renowned for its bloodsucking habits and jumping abilities.
- 2
derogatoryA thing of no significance.
verb
- 1
To remove fleas from (an animal).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Flea in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense parasitic insect:
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 flea come from?
From Middle English fle, from Old English flēah, flēa, from Proto-West Germanic *flauh, from Proto-Germanic *flauhaz (compare West Frisian flie, Low German Flo, Flö, Dutch vlo, German Floh, Icelandic fló), from pre-Germanic *plóukos, *plówkos, from or akin to Proto-Indo-European *plus- (compare Latin pulex, Sanskrit प्लुषि (plúṣi)). The archaic plural fleen is from Middle English fleen, flen, from Old English flēan (“fleas”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).