identity
/aɪˈdɛn(t)ɪti/noun
identity is spelled I-D-E-N-T-I-T-Y. The wrong spelling people search most is idenity: about 330 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 25 of all searches for the word. Identity is a noun meaning “Sameness, identicalness; the quality or fact of (several specified things) being the same”. The plural of identity is identities.
How many letters and syllables are in identity?
| Letters | 8: I-D-E-N-T-I-T-Y |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 4 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 45 times per million words; the 2,253rd most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 2; the most searched, idenity, about 330 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
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).
How do you spell identity?
Identity is spelled I-D-E-N-T-I-T-Y. 2 wrong spellings are searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 20 of the searches for identity 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 identity?
Identity appears 45 times per million words in written English, the 2,253rd 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 identity?
- UK /aɪˈdɛntɪti/
- US /aɪˈdɛn(t)ɪti/
- US /aɪˈdɛn(t)əti/
Identity has 4 syllables (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-AU_ck1_identity.ogg, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Wodencafe-identity.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of identity
- identities plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does identity mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
Sameness, identicalness; the quality or fact of (several specified things) being the same.
Benjamin Franklin established the identity of electricity and lightning.
- 2
The difference or character that marks off an individual or collective from the rest of the same kind; selfhood; the sense of who something or someone or oneself is, or the recurring characteristics that enable the recognition of such an individual or group by others or themselves.
I've been through so many changes, I have no sense of identity.
- 3
A name or persona–a mask or appearance one presents to the world–by which one is known.
This criminal has taken on several identities.
- 4
An equation which always holds true regardless of the choice of input variables.
The equation (x+y)(x−y) = x²−y² is an algebraic identity. It is true regardless of the values of x and y.
- 5
Any function which maps all elements of its domain to themselves.
- 6
An element of an algebraic structure which, when applied to another element under an operation in that structure, yields this second element.
Zero is the identity for the addition of real numbers.
- 7
AustraliaA well-known or famous person.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Identity in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense the sameness some individuals share to make up the same kind or universal:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | identité |
| German | Identität, Gleichheit, Übereinstimmung, Nämlichkeit |
| Portuguese | identidade |
| Spanish | identidad |
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 identity come from?
From Middle English ydemptite, from Middle French identité and its etymon Late Latin idemptitās, identitās, from idem (“the same”) + -tās (suffix forming abstract nouns) as a calque of Ancient Greek ταὐτότης (tautótēs, “sameness”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).