inference
in·fer·ence/ˈɪn.fə.ɹəns/noun
inference is spelled I-N-F-E-R-E-N-C-E, 3 syllables: in·fer·ence. The wrong spelling people search most is inferrence: about 30 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 114 of all searches for the word. Inference is a noun meaning “The act or process of inferring by deduction or induction”. The plural of inference is inferences.
How many letters and syllables are in inference?
| Letters | 9: I-N-F-E-R-E-N-C-E |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 3: in·fer·ence |
| In writing | 1.8 times per million words; the 20,906th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, inferrence, about 30 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation; 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 inference?
Inference is spelled I-N-F-E-R-E-N-C-E. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 114 of the searches for inference 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 inference?
Inference appears 1.8 times per million words in written English, the 20,906th 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 inference?
- UK /ˈɪn.fə.ɹəns/
- UK [ˈɪɱ.fə.ɹəns]
- UK [ˈɪɱ.fɹəns]
Inference has 3 syllables, split in·fer·ence in writing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-inference.wav, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Jjamesryan-inference.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of inference
- inferences plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does inference mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
The act or process of inferring by deduction or induction.
- 2
That which is inferred; a truth or proposition drawn from another which is admitted or supposed to be true; a conclusion; a deduction.
- 3
Output generated by a trained machine learning model as it applies learned patterns to new data.
- 4
An instance or example of this, such as a prediction, classification, decision, etc.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Inference in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense act or process of inferring by deduction or induction:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | inférence, déduction |
| German | Schlussfolgern, Schlussfolgerung, Folgerung, Inferenz |
| Portuguese | inferência |
| Spanish | inferencia, ilación |
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 inference come from?
From Latin inferentia. Morphologically infer + -ence.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).