opium
/ˈoʊ.pi.əm/noun
opium is spelled O-P-I-U-M: 5 letters and 3 syllables. It appears 2.9 times per million words in written English, the 15,798th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a noun, opium means “A yellow-brown, addictive narcotic drug obtained from the dried juice of unripe pods of the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum, and containing alkaloids…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of opium is opiums or opia.
How many letters and syllables are in opium?
| Letters | 5: O-P-I-U-M |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 3 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 2.9 times per million words; the 15,798th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in search |
| Rhymes with |
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); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How common is opium?
Opium appears 2.9 times per million words in written English, the 15,798th 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 opium?
- US /ˈoʊ.pi.əm/
- UK /ˈəʊ.pi.əm/
- /ˈoʊp.jəm/
Opium 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)-Vealhurl-opium.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
What rhymes with opium?
3 words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as opium from its last stressed vowel (/oʊpiəm/):
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 opium
- opiums plural
- opia plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does opium mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
A yellow-brown, addictive narcotic drug obtained from the dried juice of unripe pods of the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum, and containing alkaloids such as morphine, codeine, and papaverine.
- 2
Anything that numbs or stupefies.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Opium in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense drug from opium poppy:
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 opium come from?
Borrowed from Latin opium and Ancient Greek ὄπιον (ópion), from ὀπός (opós, “juice of a plant”), from Proto-Indo-European *sokʷós (“juice, resin”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).