house
/haʊ̯s/noun, verb
house is spelled H-O-U-S-E. The wrong spelling people search most is housr: about 120 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 476 of all searches for the word. House is a noun meaning “A structure built or serving as an abode of human beings”. The plural of house is houses; Wiktionary also lists housen (dialectal), hice (humorous).
How many letters and syllables are in house?
| Letters | 5: H-O-U-S-E |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 1 |
| In writing | 513 times per million words; the 188th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, housr, about 120 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
| Pairs people search | |
| Rhymes with |
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); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How do you spell house?
House is spelled H-O-U-S-E. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 475 of the searches for house 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 house?
House appears 513 times per million words in written English, the 188th 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 house?
- US /haʊ̯s/
- US [haʊ̯s]
- British /haws/
As a verb (“To keep within a structure or container”): /haʊz/.
As a noun (“House music”): /haʊs/.
House has one syllable.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-house-noun.ogg, En-uk-house.ogg, En-ca-raising-house.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Words people confuse with house
Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).
Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).
What rhymes with house?
4 words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as house from its last stressed vowel (/aʊs/):
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 house
- houses plural, present, singular, he/she/it
- hice plural
- hoose
- housing participle, present
- housed participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does house mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
A structure built or serving as an abode of human beings.
This is my house and my family's ancestral home.
- 2
An apartment building within a public housing estate.
- 3
A container; a thing which houses another.
- 4
Size and quality of residential accommodations; housing.
- 5
A building intended to contain a single household, as opposed to an apartment or condominium or building containing these.
- 6
The people who live in a house; a household.
- 7
A building used for something other than a residence (typically with qualifying word).
The former carriage house had been made over into a guest house.
- 8
A place of business; a company or organisation, especially a printing press, a publishing company, or a couturier.
A small publishing house would have a contract with an independent fulfillment house.
- 9
House music.
verb
- 1
To keep within a structure or container.
The car is housed in the garage.
- 2
To admit to residence; to harbor.
- 3
To take shelter or lodging; to abide; to lodge.
- 4
To dwell within one of the twelve astrological houses.
- 5
To contain or cover mechanical parts.
- 6
To contain one part of an object for the purpose of locating the whole.
The joists were housed into the side walls, rather than being hung from them.
- 7
obsoleteTo drive to a shelter.
- 8
obsoleteTo deposit and cover, as in the grave.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you abbreviate house?
Wiktionary records one abbreviation of house: hse.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
House in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | maison , chambre , dynastie , le papa et la maman , garer, loger |
| German | Haus, Huus , Kammer , unterbringen, beherbergen |
| Portuguese | casa , câmara , armazenar , alojar, hospedar , teatro |
| Spanish | casa, casalicio , cámara , almacenar , alojar , teatro |
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 house come from?
From Middle English hous, hus, from Old English hūs (“dwelling, shelter, house”), from Proto-West Germanic *hūs, from Proto-Germanic *hūsą (“house”), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kews-, from *(s)kewH- (“to cover, hide”). More at hose. Eclipsed non-native Middle English mees, meson, measoun (“house”), borrowed from Anglo-Norman mes, mies, meis, maisun (“house”). The uncommon plural form housen is from Middle English husen, housen.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).