penalty
pen·al·ty/ˈpɛn.əl.ti/noun
penalty is spelled P-E-N-A-L-T-Y, 3 syllables: pen·al·ty. The wrong spelling people search most is penatly: about 20 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 86 of all searches for the word. Penalty is a noun meaning “A legal sentence”. The plural of penalty is penalties.
How many letters and syllables are in penalty?
| Letters | 7: P-E-N-A-L-T-Y |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 3: pen·al·ty |
| In writing | 28 times per million words; the 3,288th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, penatly, about 20 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
| Same letters |
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 penalty?
Penalty is spelled P-E-N-A-L-T-Y. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 87 of the searches for penalty 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 penalty?
Penalty appears 28 times per million words in written English, the 3,288th 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 penalty?
- /ˈpɛn.əl.ti/
Penalty has 3 syllables, split pen·al·ty in writing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-penalty.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
What rhymes with penalty?
No other word on PlainSpell ends in the same sounds as penalty.
Spelled with the same letters in another order: aplenty, netplay.
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 penalty
- penalties plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does penalty mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
A legal sentence.
The penalty for his crime was to do hard labor.
- 2
A punishment for violating rules of procedure.
- 3
A payment forfeited for an early withdrawal from an account or an investment.
- 4
A direct free kick from the penalty spot, taken after a defensive foul in the penalty box; a penalty kick.
- 5
A punishment for an infraction of the rules, often in the form of being removed from play for a specified amount of time.
A penalty was called when he tripped up his opponent.
- 6
A disadvantageous consequence of a previous event.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you abbreviate penalty?
Wiktionary records one abbreviation of penalty: PEN.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Penalty in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | penalisation , peine |
| German | Strafe , Pönale, Vertragsstrafe |
| Portuguese | pena , penalidade |
| Spanish | pena |
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 penalty come from?
From Middle French pénalité, from pénal, from Latin poenālis, from poena, borrowing of Ancient Greek ποινή (poinḗ), from Proto-Hellenic *kʷoinā́, from Proto-Indo-European *kʷoynéh₂, comprising *kʷey- + *-néh₂.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).