openness
noun
openness is spelled O-P-E-N-N-E-S-S. The wrong spelling people search most is openess: about 110 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026). Openness is a noun meaning “Accommodating attitude or opinion, as in receptivity to new ideas, behaviors, cultures, peoples…”. The plural of openness is opennesses.
How many letters and syllables are in openness?
| Letters | 8: O-P-E-N-N-E-S-S |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 3 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 2.5 times per million words; the 17,122nd most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, openess, about 110 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
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).
How do you spell openness?
Openness is spelled O-P-E-N-N-E-S-S. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure.
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 openness?
Openness appears 2.5 times per million words in written English, the 17,122nd 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 openness?
- US
Openness 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)-Flame,_not_lame-openness.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of openness
- opennesses plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does openness mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
Accommodating attitude or opinion, as in receptivity to new ideas, behaviors, cultures, peoples, environments, experiences, etc., different from the familiar, conventional, traditional, or one's own.
- 2
The degree to which a person, group, organization, institution, or society exhibits this liberal attitude or opinion.
- 3
Lack of secrecy; candour, transparency.
- 4
The degree of accessibility to view, use, and modify in a shared environment with legal rights generally held in common and preventing proprietary restrictions on the right of others to continue viewing, using, modifying and sharing.
- 5
The degree to which a system operates with distinct boundaries across which exchange occurs capable of inducing change in the system while maintaining the boundaries themselves.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Openness in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense accommodating attitude or opinion:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| Spanish | apertura |
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 openness come from?
From Middle English *opennesse, from Old English openness (“openness, publicity”), equivalent to open + -ness. Cognate with Old High German offannussi (“disclosure, revelation, openness”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).