gene
/d͡ʒiːn/noun
gene is spelled G-E-N-E: 4 letters and one syllable. It appears 23 times per million words in written English, the 3,875th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data, counting Gene, the name). As a noun, gene means “A theoretical unit of heredity of living organisms which may take several values and (in principle) predetermines a precise trait of an organism's…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of gene is genes.
How many letters and syllables are in gene?
| Letters | 4: G-E-N-E |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 1 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 23 times per million words; the 3,875th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in search |
| Pairs people 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); 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).
How common is gene?
Gene appears 23 times per million words in written English, the 3,875th most frequent word form in the list. The list counts every capitalisation together, so this includes Gene, the name.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce gene?
- /d͡ʒiːn/
Gene 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: En-us-gene.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Words people confuse with gene
Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).
Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).
Forms of gene
- genes plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does gene mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
A theoretical unit of heredity of living organisms which may take several values and (in principle) predetermines a precise trait of an organism's form (phenotype), such as hair color.
Near-synonym: cistron (often synonymous)
- 2
A segment of DNA or RNA from a cell's or an organism's genome, that may take several forms and thus parameterizes a phenomenon, such as (often) the structure of a protein.
Holonym: locus
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Gene in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense unit of heredity:
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 gene come from?
From German Gen, from Ancient Greek γενεά (geneá, “generation, descent”), from the aorist infinitive of γίγνομαι (gígnomai, “to come into being”). Coined by Danish botanist Wilhelm Ludwig Johannsen in 1909, in a German-language publication, from the last syllable of pangene.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).