mucous
mu·cous/ˈmjuːkəs/adjective
mucous is spelled M-U-C-O-U-S, 2 syllables: mu·cous. The wrong spelling people search most is mucuous: about 20 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 53 of all searches for the word. Mucous is an adjective meaning “Pertaining to mucus”.
How many letters and syllables are in mucous?
| Letters | 6: M-U-C-O-U-S |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 2: mu·cous |
| In writing | about once in every 2 million words; the 38,863rd most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, mucuous, about 20 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
| Pairs people search | |
| Sounds like |
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 mucous?
Mucous is spelled M-U-C-O-U-S. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 53 of the searches for mucous 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 mucous?
Mucous appears about once in every 2 million words in written English, the 38,863rd 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 mucous?
- /ˈmjuːkəs/
Mucous has 2 syllables, split mu·cous in writing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-mucous.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Words people confuse with mucous
Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).
Sounds like: mucus (Wiktionary's homophone list; some hold only in some accents).
Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).
Forms of mucous
- more mucous comparative
- most mucous superlative
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does mucous mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
adjective
- 1
Pertaining to mucus.
- 2
Having the qualities of mucus; resembling mucus.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Mucous in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
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 mucous come from?
Naturalized from Late Latin mūcōsus, from Latin mūcus. By surface analysis, muc(us) + -ous = muco- + -ous.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).