impede
/ɪmˈpiːd/verb
impede is spelled I-M-P-E-D-E. The wrong spelling people search most is impeed: about 100 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 23 of all searches for the word. Impede is a verb meaning “To get in the way of; to hinder”.
How many letters and syllables are in impede?
| Letters | 6: I-M-P-E-D-E |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 2 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 1.4 times per million words; the 24,170th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, impeed, about 100 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 impede?
Impede is spelled I-M-P-E-D-E. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 23 of the searches for impede 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 impede?
Impede appears 1.4 times per million words in written English, the 24,170th 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 impede?
- /ɪmˈpiːd/
Impede 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-impede.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of impede
- impedes present, singular, he/she/it
- impeding participle, present
- impeded participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does impede mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
verb
- 1
To get in the way of; to hinder.
impede someone's progress
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Impede in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense to get in the way of; to hinder:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | entraver |
| German | behindern, erschweren, hemmen, hindern, vereiteln |
| Portuguese | impedir |
| Spanish | impedir, empecer |
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 impede come from?
Borrowed from Latin impediō (“to shackle”), from pēs (“foot”) (compare pedestrian). First attested use as a verb was in William Shakespeare's Macbeth, see quotations.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).