phosphorous
adjective
phosphorous is spelled P-H-O-S-P-H-O-R-O-U-S. The wrong spelling people search most is phosphourous: about 20 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026). Phosphorous is an adjective meaning “Of or pertaining to phosphorus”.
How many letters and syllables are in phosphorous?
| Letters | 11: P-H-O-S-P-H-O-R-O-U-S |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 3 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | about once in every 3 million words; the 52,337th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, phosphourous, about 20 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
| Pairs people search |
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 phosphorous?
Phosphorous is spelled P-H-O-S-P-H-O-R-O-U-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 phosphorous?
Phosphorous appears about once in every 3 million words in written English, the 52,337th 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 phosphorous?
- US
Phosphorous 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-phosphorous.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Words people confuse with phosphorous
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 does phosphorous mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
adjective
- 1
Of or pertaining to phosphorus.
- 2
Resembling phosphorus.
- 3
Of, relating to, or containing trivalent phosphorus.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Phosphorous in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense of or pertaining to phosphorus:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | phosphoreux, phosphorique, phosphorescent, phosphorescente |
| Portuguese | fosforoso |
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.