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PlainSpell

great

/ˈɡɹeɪt/adjective, interjection, noun, adverb

great is spelled G-R-E-A-T. The wrong spelling people search most is graet: about 80 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 169 of all searches for the word. Great is an adjective meaning “Taking much space; large”.

How many letters and syllables are in great?

Letters5: G-R-E-A-T
Syllables1 (from its American pronunciation)
In writing759 times per million words; the 140th most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searched1; the most searched, graet, about 80 Bing searches a month (all of them)
Pairs people search
Sounds like
Rhymes with
Same letters

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); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.

How do you spell great?

Great is spelled G-R-E-A-T. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 170 of the searches for great in either form.

greatthe right spelling13,520 searches a month
graete and a swapped80 searches a month

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). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.

How common is great?

Great appears 759 times per million words in written English, the 140th 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 great?

  • US /ˈɡɹeɪt/
  • British /ˈɡɹɛjt/
  • Australia /ˈɡɹæɪt/

Great 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)-Naomi_Persephone_Amethyst_(NaomiAmethyst)-great.wav, En-us-great.ogg, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-great-.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Words people confuse with great

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

grate vs great320 G
great vs greet0 B

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

Also written: grate.

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

What rhymes with great?

The 12 most written words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as great from its last stressed vowel (/eɪt/):

Spelled with the same letters in another order: grate, targe, gater.

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 great

  • greater comparative
  • greatest superlative
  • geet
  • gert
  • girt
  • gurt UK
  • greats plural

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

What does great mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

adjective

  1. 1

    Taking much space; large.

  2. 2

    Much, more than usual.

    great worry

  3. 3

    UKinformalIntensifying a word or expression, used in mild oaths.

    a dirty great smack in the face

  4. 4

    informalVery good; excellent; wonderful; fantastic.

    Dinner was great.

  5. 5

    Important, consequential.

    a great dilemma

  6. 6

    Involving more generations than the qualified word implies – as many extra generations as repetitions of the word great (from 1510s).

    great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather, great-great-great-grandfather

  7. 7

    obsoletePregnant; large with young; full of.

    great with child

  8. 8

    obsoleteIntimate; familiar.

interjection

  1. 1

    Expression of gladness and content about something.

    Great! Thanks for the wonderful work.

  2. 2

    A sarcastic inversion thereof.

    Oh, great! I just dumped all 500 sheets of the manuscript all over and now I have to put them back in order.

noun

  1. 1

    A person of major significance, accomplishment or acclaim.

    Newton and Einstein are two of the greats of the history of science.

  2. 2

    The main division in a pipe organ, usually the loudest division.

  3. 3

    An instance of the word great signifying an additional generation in phrases expressing family relationships.

    my three-greats grandmother

  4. 4

    informalrareA great-grandparent.

adverb

  1. 1

    informalVery well (in a very satisfactory manner).

    Those mechanical colored pencils work great because they don’t have to be sharpened.

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

How do you abbreviate great?

Wiktionary records one abbreviation of great: grt.

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

Great in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchgrand (very big, large scale), excellent, super, formidable (very good), chouette, génial (great!)
Germangroß (very big, large scale), großartig, schön, fein, wundervoll (very good), der Große (important title)
Portuguesegrande, grandioso, enorme (very big, large scale), ótimo, fantástico (very good), magnífico (great!)
Spanishgrande, gran, grosso, groso, grave (very big, large scale), muy bueno (very good)

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 great come from?

From Middle English greet, grete (“great, large”), from Old English grēat (“big, massive; tall; thick; coarse”), from Proto-West Germanic *graut, from Proto-Germanic *grautaz (“coarse, crude; big, large”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰrewd-, *gʰer- (“to rub; to stroke; to grind; to remove”).

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

What to look up after great