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phosphorescence

/ˌfɑs.fəˈɹɛs.əns/noun

phosphorescence is a noun meaning “The emission of light without any perceptible heat; the quality of being phosphorescent” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled P-H-O-S-P-H-O-R-E-S-C-E-N-C-E and has 4 syllables, and it appears about once in every 13 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of phosphorescence is phosphorescences.

What does phosphorescence mean?

noun

  1. 1

    The emission of light without any perceptible heat; the quality of being phosphorescent.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce phosphorescence?

  • UK /ˌfɒs.fəˈɹɛs.əns/
  • US /ˌfɑs.fəˈɹɛs.əns/

Phosphorescence has 4 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)-NaomiAmethyst-phosphorescence.wav, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Tesco250-phosphorescence.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of phosphorescence

  • phosphorescences plural

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is phosphorescence?

Phosphorescence appears about once in every 13 million words in written English, the 109,062nd 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).

Phosphorescence in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense emission of light without heat:

LanguageWords
Frenchphosphorescence
GermanNachleuchten, Phosphoreszenz
Portuguesefosforescência
Spanishfosforescencia

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 phosphorescence come from?

From phosphorescent. Morphologically phosphoresce + -ence.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).