hippopotamus
hip·po·po·ta·mus/ˌhɪp.əˈpɑ.tə.məs/noun
hippopotamus is spelled H-I-P-P-O-P-O-T-A-M-U-S, 5 syllables: hip·po·po·ta·mus. The wrong spelling people search most is hipopotamus: about 40 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 179 of all searches for the word. Hippopotamus is a noun meaning “A semi-aquatic, herbivorous, African hoofed mammal of the family Hippopotamidae”. The plural of hippopotamus is hippopotami or hippopotamuses.
How do you spell hippopotamus?
Hippopotamus is spelled H-I-P-P-O-P-O-T-A-M-U-S. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 180 of the searches for hippopotamus in either form.
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.
What does hippopotamus mean?
noun
- 1
A semi-aquatic, herbivorous, African hoofed mammal of the family Hippopotamidae.
- 2
The common hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce hippopotamus?
- UK /ˌhɪp.əˈpɒt.ə.məs/
- US /ˌhɪp.əˈpɑ.tə.məs/
- US [ˌhɪp.əˈpɑ.ɾə.məs]
Hippopotamus has 5 syllables, split hip·po·po·ta·mus in writing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-hippopotamus.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of hippopotamus
- hippopotami plural
- hippopotamuses plural
- hippotamus
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is hippopotamus?
Hippopotamus appears about once in every 3 million words in written English, the 49,368th 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 abbreviate hippopotamus?
Wiktionary records one abbreviation of hippopotamus: hippo.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Hippopotamus in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense African mammal:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | hippopotame, hippo, cheval marin |
| German | Flusspferd, Nilpferd |
| Portuguese | hipopótamo |
| Spanish | hipopótamo |
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 hippopotamus come from?
From Latin and New Latin hippopotamus, from Ancient Greek ἱπποπόταμος (hippopótamos), from ἵππος (híppos, “horse”) (English hippo-) + ποταμός (potamós, “river”). First attested in the 1560s. Displaced displaced English nicker (from native Old English nicor) and river horse.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).