guest
/ɡɛst/noun, verb
guest is spelled G-U-E-S-T: 5 letters and one syllable. It appears 38 times per million words in written English, the 2,581st most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a noun, guest means “A recipient of hospitality, especially someone staying by invitation at the house of another” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of guest is guests.
How many letters and syllables are in guest?
| Letters | 5: G-U-E-S-T |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 1 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 38 times per million words; the 2,581st most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in 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).
How common is guest?
Guest appears 38 times per million words in written English, the 2,581st 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 guest?
- /ɡɛst/
Guest 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-guest.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of guest
- guests plural, present, singular, he/she/it
- guesting participle, present
- guested participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does guest mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
A recipient of hospitality, especially someone staying by invitation at the house of another.
The guests were let in by the butler.
- 2
A patron or customer in a hotel etc.
Guests must vacate their rooms by 10 o'clock on their day of departure.
- 3
An invited visitor or performer to an institution or to a broadcast.
special guest
- 4
A user given temporary access to a system despite not having an account of their own.
- 5
Any insect that lives in the nest of another without compulsion and usually not as a parasite.
- 6
An inquiline.
verb
- 1
To appear as a guest, especially on a broadcast.
- 2
As a musician: to play as a guest, providing an instrument that a band/orchestra does not normally have in its line up (for instance, percussion in a string band).
- 3
obsoleteTo receive or entertain hospitably.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Guest in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | invité, invitée, hôte , client, cliente |
| German | Gast , gastieren |
| Portuguese | hóspede, convidado , convidada |
| Spanish | huésped, visita, visitante, convidado, comensal |
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 guest come from?
From Middle English gest, from Old Norse gestr, which replaced or was merged with Old English ġiest, both from Proto-Germanic *gastiz, from Proto-Indo-European *gʰóstis (“stranger, guest, host, someone with whom one has reciprocal duties of hospitality”). Doublet of host, from Latin.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).