measly
meas·ly/ˈmizli/adjective
measly is spelled M-E-A-S-L-Y, 2 syllables: meas·ly. The wrong spelling people search most is measily: about 20 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 25 of all searches for the word. Measly is an adjective meaning “Particularly of pigs or pork: infected with larval tapeworms or trichinae (parasitic roundworms)”.
How many letters and syllables are in measly?
| Letters | 6: M-E-A-S-L-Y |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 2: meas·ly |
| In writing | about once in every 2 million words; the 37,459th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, measily, about 20 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 measly?
Measly is spelled M-E-A-S-L-Y. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 25 of the searches for measly 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 measly?
Measly appears about once in every 2 million words in written English, the 37,459th 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 measly?
- UK /ˈmiːzli/
- US /ˈmizli/
Measly has 2 syllables, split meas·ly in writing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-au-measly.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of measly
- measlier comparative
- measliest superlative
- measley
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does measly mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
adjective
- 1
Particularly of pigs or pork: infected with larval tapeworms or trichinae (parasitic roundworms).
- 2
Of a person: infected with measles.
- 3
informalSmall (especially contemptibly small) in amount.
For one whole day's work all I was given was twenty measly pounds.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Measly in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense small in amount:
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 measly come from?
From measle (“singular of measles”) + -y; the word measle is either from Middle Dutch masel (“a blister filled with blood; a pustule, a skin blemish”), or Middle Low German masel (“a red skin blemish”), from Proto-Germanic *masuraz (“a knot or scar in wood; a knarl”), from *mas-, *mēs- (“a spot; a sore; a scar”), from Proto-Indo-European *mos- (“a skin sore”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).