impressive
/ɪmˈpɹɛsɪv/adjective
impressive is spelled I-M-P-R-E-S-S-I-V-E. The wrong spelling people search most is impresive: about 50 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 23 of all searches for the word. Impressive is an adjective meaning “Making, or tending to make, a positive impression; having power to impress”.
How many letters and syllables are in impressive?
| Letters | 10: I-M-P-R-E-S-S-I-V-E |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 3 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 30 times per million words; the 3,161st most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, impresive, about 50 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
| Same letters |
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); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How do you spell impressive?
Impressive is spelled I-M-P-R-E-S-S-I-V-E. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 23 of the searches for impressive 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 impressive?
Impressive appears 30 times per million words in written English, the 3,161st 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 impressive?
- /ɪmˈpɹɛsɪv/
Impressive 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: En-us-impressive.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
What rhymes with impressive?
No other word on PlainSpell ends in the same sounds as impressive.
Spelled with the same letters in another order: permissive.
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 impressive
- more impressive comparative
- most impressive superlative
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does impressive mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
adjective
- 1
Making, or tending to make, a positive impression; having power to impress.
an impressive speech
- 2
Capable of being impressed.
- 3
Appealing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Impressive in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | impressionnant, épatant , impressionnable |
| German | beeindruckend, eindrucksvoll, imposant |
| Portuguese | impressionante |
| Spanish | impresionante , halagüeño, impresivo, apelativo |
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 impressive come from?
From impress + -ive.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).