foulness
/ˈfaʊəl.nəs/noun
foulness is a noun meaning “The state of being foul” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-O-U-L-N-E-S-S and has 2 syllables, and it appears about once in every 14 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data, counting Foulness, the name). The plural of foulness is foulnesses.
What does foulness mean?
noun
- 1
The state of being foul.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce foulness?
- UK /ˈfaʊəl.nəs/
- UK /ˈfaʊl̩.nəs/
Foulness has 2 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-foulness.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of foulness
- foulnesses plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is foulness?
Foulness appears about once in every 14 million words in written English, the 111,684th most frequent word form in the list. The list counts every capitalisation together, so this includes Foulness, the name.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Where does foulness come from?
From Middle English foulnesse, foulnes, from Old English fūlnes (“foulness”), equivalent to foul + -ness. Compare Dutch vuilnis (“rubbish; garbage; trash”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).