illness
/ˈɪl.nəs/noun
illness is spelled I-L-L-N-E-S-S. The wrong spelling people search most is ilness: about 30 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 36 of all searches for the word. Illness is a noun meaning “An instance (episode) of a disease or poor health”. The plural of illness is illnesses.
How many letters and syllables are in illness?
| Letters | 7: I-L-L-N-E-S-S |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 2 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 26 times per million words; the 3,558th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 2; the most searched, ilness, about 30 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 illness?
Illness is spelled I-L-L-N-E-S-S. 2 wrong spellings are searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 27 of the searches for illness 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 illness?
Illness appears 26 times per million words in written English, the 3,558th 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 illness?
- /ˈɪl.nəs/
Illness has 2 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-us-illness.ogg, En-uk-illness.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of illness
- illnesses plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does illness mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
An instance (episode) of a disease or poor health.
Her grandmother had passed away after a long illness.
- 2
A state of bad health or disease.
Many working days this year have been lost through illness.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Illness in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense an instance of a disease or poor health:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | maladie |
| German | Krankheit |
| Portuguese | doença, enfermidade, maladia |
| Spanish | enfermedad |
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 illness come from?
From ill + -ness.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).