nit
/nɪt/noun, verb
nit is spelled N-I-T: 3 letters and one syllable. It appears 1.2 times per million words in written English, the 25,751st most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a noun, nit means “The egg of a louse” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of nit is nits.
How many letters and syllables are in nit?
| Letters | 3: N-I-T |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 1 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 1.2 times per million words; the 25,751st most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in search |
| Pairs people search | |
| Sounds like | |
| 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 nit?
Nit appears 1.2 times per million words in written English, the 25,751st 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 nit?
- /nɪt/
Nit has one syllable (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: En-au-nit.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Words people confuse with nit
Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).
Sounds like: gnit, knit (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).
What rhymes with nit?
No other word on PlainSpell ends in the same sounds as nit.
Spelled with the same letters in another order: tin, int.
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 nit
- nits plural, present, singular, he/she/it
- nitting participle, present
- nitted participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does nit mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
The egg of a louse.
- 2
A young louse.
- 3
IrelandUKA head louse regardless of its age.
- 4
UKslangA fool, a nitwit.
- 5
A minor shortcoming; the object of a nitpick.
- 6
A nitpicker.
- 7
A candela per square metre.
This brightness of this LCD screen is between 900 and 1000 nits.
- 8
Synonym of nat (“logarithmic unit of information”).
- 9
A player with an overly cautious and reactive playing style.
verb
- 1
To have the modus vivendi of a drug addict, to live the life of a nitty.
noun
- 1
IndiaAbbreviation of National Institute of Technology.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Nit in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense egg of a louse:
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 nit come from?
From Middle English nite, from Old English hnitu, from Proto-Germanic *hnits (compare Dutch neet, German Nisse, Norwegian nit), from Proto-Indo-European *-níd- (compare Scottish Gaelic sneadh, Lithuanian gli̇̀nda, Polish gnida, Albanian thëri, Ancient Greek κονίς (konís)).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).