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multimedia

/ˌmʌltiˈmidi.ə/noun, adjective

multimedia is a noun meaning “The combined use of sound, video, and text to present an idea” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled M-U-L-T-I-M-E-D-I-A and has 5 syllables, and it appears 3.6 times per million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).

What does multimedia mean?

noun

  1. 1

    The combined use of sound, video, and text to present an idea.

adjective

  1. 1

    of, or relating to this combined use of media

  2. 2

    of, or relating to an application that can combine such media into an integrated package

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

How do you pronounce multimedia?

  • UK /ˌmʌltiˈmiːdi.ə/
  • US /ˌmʌltiˈmidi.ə/
  • Australia /ˌmɐltiˈmiːdi.ə/

Multimedia has 5 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)-Vininn126-multimedia.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

How common is multimedia?

Multimedia appears 3.6 times per million words in written English, the 13,695th 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 abbreviate multimedia?

Wiktionary records one abbreviation of multimedia: media.

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

Multimedia in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchmultimédia (The use of different media to convey information)
GermanMultimedia (The use of different media to convey information)
Portuguesemultimédia, multimídia (The use of different media to convey information)
Spanishmultimedia (The use of different media to convey information), multimedial, multimediático (of, or relating to this combined use of media)

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 multimedia come from?

From multi- + media.

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