opossum
o·pos·sum/əˈpɑsəm/noun
opossum is spelled O-P-O-S-S-U-M, 3 syllables: o·pos·sum. The wrong spelling people search most is opposum: about 1,500 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 10 of all searches for the word. Opossum is a noun meaning “Any American marsupial of the family Didelphidae in the order Didelphimorphia”. The plural of opossum is opossums.
How many letters and syllables are in opossum?
| Letters | 7: O-P-O-S-S-U-M |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 3: o·pos·sum |
| In writing | about once in every 3 million words; the 54,808th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, opposum, about 1,500 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 opossum?
Opossum is spelled O-P-O-S-S-U-M. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 10 of the searches for opossum in either form.
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 opossum?
Opossum appears about once in every 3 million words in written English, the 54,808th 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 opossum?
- UK /əˈpɒsəm/
- US /əˈpɑsəm/
Opossum has 3 syllables, split o·pos·sum in writing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-opossum.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Words people confuse with opossum
Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).
Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).
What rhymes with opossum?
One word on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as opossum from its last stressed vowel (/ɑsəm/):
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 opossum
- opossums plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does opossum mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
Any American marsupial of the family Didelphidae in the order Didelphimorphia.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Opossum in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense marsupial of the Didelphidae:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | sarigue, opossum, rat de bois |
| German | Beutelratte, Opossum |
| Portuguese | gambá, cuíca, opossum, sariguê, mucura, saruê |
| Spanish | zarigüeya, carachupa, chucha, comadreja, faro, muca |
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 opossum come from?
From Powhatan aposoum (“white animal”), from Proto-Algonquian *wa·p-aʔθemwa (“white dog”); compare Ojibwe waabasim (“white dog”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).