homunculus
/həˈmʌŋk.jə.ləs/noun
homunculus is spelled H-O-M-U-N-C-U-L-U-S. The wrong spelling people search most is homonculus: about 960 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 10 of all searches for the word. Homunculus is a noun meaning “A small, artificially created human or human-like being”. The plural of homunculus is homunculi or homunculuses.
How many letters and syllables are in homunculus?
| Letters | 10: H-O-M-U-N-C-U-L-U-S |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 4 (from its pronunciation) |
| In writing | about once in every 6 million words; the 70,702nd most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, homonculus, about 960 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation; 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 do you spell homunculus?
Homunculus is spelled H-O-M-U-N-C-U-L-U-S. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 10 of the searches for homunculus 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.
How common is homunculus?
Homunculus appears about once in every 6 million words in written English, the 70,702nd 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 homunculus?
- UK /hɒˈmʌŋk.jʊ.ləs/
- US /həˈmʌŋk.jə.ləs/
- US /hoʊˈmʌŋk.jə.ləs/
Homunculus has 4 syllables (counted from the pronunciation).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-homunculus.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of homunculus
- homunculi plural
- homunculuses plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does homunculus mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
A small, artificially created human or human-like being.
- 2
A small human.
- 3
A miniature adult, once imagined by spermists to be present in human sperm.
- 4
The nerve map of the human body that exists on the parietal lobe of the human brain.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Homunculus in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense little man:
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 homunculus come from?
Borrowed from Latin homunculus, from homō (“man”) + -culus (diminutive suffix).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).