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PlainSpell

media

/ˈmi.di.ə/noun, adjective

media is spelled M-E-D-I-A: 5 letters and 3 syllables. It appears 200 times per million words in written English, the 505th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). People search “media vs medium” about 880 times a month (Google, United States). As a noun, media means “The middle layer of the wall of a blood vessel or lymph vessel which is composed of connective and muscular tissue” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of media is medias or mediae.

How many letters and syllables are in media?

Letters5: M-E-D-I-A
Syllables3 (from its American pronunciation)
In writing200 times per million words; the 505th most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searchednone measured in search
Pairs people search
Rhymes with
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 common is media?

Media appears 200 times per million words in written English, the 505th 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 media?

  • UK /ˈmiː.di.ə/
  • UK /ˈmɛ.di.ə/
  • US /ˈmi.di.ə/

As a noun (“The means and institutions for publishing and broadcasting…”): /ˈmiːdiə/, /ˈmidi.ə/.

Media 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)-Vealhurl-media.wav, En-us-media.oga, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Words people confuse with media

Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).

media vs medium880 G

Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).

What rhymes with media?

4 words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as media from its last stressed vowel (/idiə/):

Spelled with the same letters in another order: aimed, amide.

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 media

  • medias plural
  • mediae plural

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What does media mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

noun

  1. 1

    The middle layer of the wall of a blood vessel or lymph vessel which is composed of connective and muscular tissue.

  2. 2

    datedA voiced stop consonant.

  3. 3

    One of the major veins of the insect wing, between the radius and the cubitus.

  4. 4

    An ant specialized as a forager in a leaf-cutter ant colony.

  5. 5

    Synonym of cuarto: a half-fanega, a traditional Spanish unit of dry measure equivalent to about 27.8 L

  6. 6

    The means and institutions for publishing and broadcasting information.

    As a result of the rise of, first, television news and entertainment media and, second, web-based media, traditional print-based media has declined in popularity.

  7. 7

    The totality of content items (television shows, films, books, photographs, etc.) which are broadcast or published.

    Fighter pilots are depicted as cool in popular media like Top Gun.

  8. 8

    The journalists and other professionals who comprise the mass communication industry.

    Some celebrities dislike press conferences, where the media bombards them with questions.

  9. 9

    Files and data comprising material viewable by humans, but usually not plain text; audiovisual material.

  10. 10

    plural of medium (only in certain senses) (a form of medium)

    The media have differed in their approaches to coverage of the scandal.

  11. 11

    nonstandardrareplural of medium (“someone who supposedly conveys information from the spirit world”) (a form of medium)

adjective

  1. 1

    Clipping of multimedia.

    I have media files stored on an external hard drive.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you abbreviate media?

Wiktionary records 2 abbreviations of media: M, TMT.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Media in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Portuguesemídia, média, media (means and institutions for publishing and…)
Spanishmedios (means and institutions for publishing and…), medios de comunicación (the journalists and other professionals who…)
Frenchmédias (the journalists and other professionals who…)
GermanMedien (the journalists and other professionals who…)

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 media come from?

Learned borrowing from Latin media, the feminine nominative of medius (“middle”, adjective), from Proto-Italic *meðjos, from Proto-Indo-European *médʰyos (“between”). In the sense of a unit of dry measure, via Spanish media. Doublet of medium, medio, and mediate.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What to look up after media