Skip to main content
PlainSpell

gentlemen

/ˈd͡ʒɛn.təl.mɪn/noun

gentlemen is a noun meaning “plural of gentleman” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled G-E-N-T-L-E-M-E-N and has 3 syllables, and it appears 13 times per million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).

What does gentlemen mean?

noun

  1. 1

    plural of gentleman (a form of gentleman)

  2. 2

    Alternative form of gentlemen's: a men's room, a lavatory intended for use by men.

noun

as Gentlemen
  1. 1

    Alternative form of gentlemen: a men's room, a lavatory for use by men.

    "You go and leave them in the Gentlemen." "Leave 'em in the lavatory?"

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

How do you pronounce gentlemen?

  • /ˈd͡ʒɛn.təl.mɪn/
  • /-ən/
  • /-ɛn/

Gentlemen has 3 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: En-us-gentlemen.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

How common is gentlemen?

Gentlemen appears 13 times per million words in written English, the 5,778th 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).

Words people confuse with gentlemen

Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).

gentleman vs gentlemen1,600 G

Also written: gentlemen's.

Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).