photon
/ˈfəʊtɒn/noun
photon is spelled P-H-O-T-O-N: 6 letters and 2 syllables. It appears 2.1 times per million words in written English, the 19,077th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a noun, photon means “The quantum of light and other electromagnetic energy, regarded as a discrete particle having zero rest mass, no electric charge, and an indefinitely…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of photon is photons.
How many letters and syllables are in photon?
| Letters | 6: P-H-O-T-O-N |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 2 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 2.1 times per million words; the 19,077th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in 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).
How common is photon?
Photon appears 2.1 times per million words in written English, the 19,077th 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 photon?
- /ˈfəʊtɒn/
Photon has 2 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-photon.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of photon
- photons plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does photon mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
The quantum of light and other electromagnetic energy, regarded as a discrete particle having zero rest mass, no electric charge, and an indefinitely long lifetime. It is a gauge boson.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Photon in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense quantum of light:
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 photon come from?
From photo- + -on. Coined by American physicist Leonard Troland in 1916 as a unit of light hitting the retina, and later popularized in a more modern sense by Gilbert N. Lewis, with the term gaining acceptance in the physics community by the late 1920s.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).