impedance
[ɪmˈpidn̩s]noun
impedance is spelled I-M-P-E-D-A-N-C-E. The wrong spelling people search most is impedence: about 370 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 2 in 10 of all searches for the word. Impedance is a noun meaning “The act of impeding; that which impedes; a hindrance”. The plural of impedance is impedances.
How many letters and syllables are in impedance?
| Letters | 9: I-M-P-E-D-A-N-C-E |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 3 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 1.4 times per million words; the 23,835th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, impedence, about 370 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 impedance?
Impedance is spelled I-M-P-E-D-A-N-C-E. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 2 in 10 of the searches for impedance 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 impedance?
Impedance appears 1.4 times per million words in written English, the 23,835th 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 impedance?
- UK [ɪmˈpiːdn̩s]
- US [ɪmˈpidn̩s]
- Australia [ɪmˈpiːdn̩s]
Impedance has 3 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: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Rho9998-impedance.wav, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vininn126-impedance.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of impedance
- impedances plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does impedance mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
The act of impeding; that which impedes; a hindrance.
- 2
A measure of the opposition to the flow of an alternating current in a circuit; the aggregation of its resistance, and inductive and capacitive reactances; the ratio of voltage to current treated as complex quantities.
- 3
a measure of opposition to motion of something subjected to a force; the ratio of force to velocity treated as complex quantities.
- 4
the ratio of sound pressure to volume flow rate treated as complex quantities.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Impedance in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense physics, measure of opposition to flow of current:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | impédance |
| German | Impedanz |
| Portuguese | impedância |
| Spanish | impedancia |
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 impedance come from?
From impede + -ance. In sense 2 and sense 3 it was coined by English mathematician and physicist Oliver Heaviside in 1886.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).