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PlainSpell

neighbour

neigh·bour/ˈneɪbɚ/noun, verb

neighbour is spelled N-E-I-G-H-B-O-U-R, 2 syllables: neigh·bour. The wrong spelling people search most is neigbour: about 20 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 37 of all searches for the word. Neighbour is a noun meaning “A person living on adjacent or nearby land; a person situated adjacently or nearby; anything (of the same…”. The plural of neighbour is neighbours.

How many letters and syllables are in neighbour?

Letters9: N-E-I-G-H-B-O-U-R
Syllables2: neigh·bour
In writing4.9 times per million words; the 11,373rd most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searched1; the most searched, neigbour, about 20 Bing searches a month (all of them)
Pairs people search
Rhymes with

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); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.

How do you spell neighbour?

Neighbour is spelled N-E-I-G-H-B-O-U-R. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 38 of the searches for neighbour in either form.

neighbourthe right spelling730 searches a month
neigboura missing h20 searches a month

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 neighbour?

Neighbour appears 4.9 times per million words in written English, the 11,373rd 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 neighbour?

  • UK /ˈneɪbə/
  • US /ˈneɪbɚ/

Neighbour has 2 syllables, split neigh·bour in writing.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-uk-neighbour.ogg, En-us-neighbour.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Words people confuse with neighbour

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

neighbor vs neighbour390 G

Also written: neighbor.

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

What rhymes with neighbour?

6 words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as neighbour from its last stressed vowel (/eɪbəɹ/):

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 neighbour

  • neighbours plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • neighbor US
  • neighba
  • neighbouring participle, present
  • neighboured participle, past

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

What does neighbour mean?

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

noun

  1. 1

    UKA person living on adjacent or nearby land; a person situated adjacently or nearby; anything (of the same type of thing as the subject) in an adjacent or nearby position.

    My neighbour has two noisy cats.

  2. 2

    UKOne who is near in sympathy or confidence.

  3. 3

    UKA fellow human being.

  4. 4

    UKAnything located directly adjacent to something else.

    The flood fill algorithm fills an area with colour by starting at one pixel and recursively visiting its neighbours.

verb

  1. 1

    UKTo be adjacent to

    Though France neighbours Germany, its culture is significantly different.

  2. 2

    UKTo be similar to, to be almost the same as.

    That sort of talk is neighbouring on treason.

  3. 3

    UKTo associate intimately with; to be close to.

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

Neighbour in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchvoisin, voisine (a person living on adjacent or nearby land), prochain, prochaine (fellow human)
GermanNachbar, Nachbarin (a person living on adjacent or nearby land), Nächster, Nächste, Mitmensch (fellow human), benachbart sein (to be adjacent to)
Portuguesevizinho, vizinha (a person living on adjacent or nearby land), próximo, próxima (fellow human), vizinhar com (to be adjacent to)
Spanishvecino, vecina (a person living on adjacent or nearby land), prójimo, prójima (fellow human)

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 neighbour come from?

From Middle English neighebour, neighbour, neyghebour, from Old English nēahġebūr (“neighbour”), from Proto-West Germanic *nāhwagabūrō, from Proto-Germanic *nēhwagabūrô (“neighbour”, literally “near-dweller”), from *nēhwaz (“close, near”) + *gabūrô (“dweller”). Equivalent to nigh (“near”) + bower (“farmer”).

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

What to look up after neighbour