portrait
/ˈpɔɹtɹət/noun, adjective
portrait is spelled P-O-R-T-R-A-I-T. The wrong spelling people search most is potrait: about 190 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 39 of all searches for the word. Portrait is a noun meaning “A painting or other picture of a person, especially the head and shoulders”. The plural of portrait is portraits.
How many letters and syllables are in portrait?
| Letters | 8: P-O-R-T-R-A-I-T |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 2 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 17 times per million words; the 4,934th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, potrait, about 190 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
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 portrait?
Portrait is spelled P-O-R-T-R-A-I-T. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 39 of the searches for portrait 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 portrait?
Portrait appears 17 times per million words in written English, the 4,934th 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 portrait?
- UK /ˈpɔːtɹeɪt/
- UK /ˈpɔːtɹɪt/
- US /ˈpɔɹtɹət/
Portrait 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: En-us-portrait.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of portrait
- portraits plural, present, singular, he/she/it
- portraiting participle, present
- portraited participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does portrait mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
A painting or other picture of a person, especially the head and shoulders.
- 2
An accurate depiction of a person, a mood, etc.
The author painted a good portrait of urban life in New York in his latest book.
- 3
A print orientation where the vertical sides are longer than the horizontal sides.
adjective
- 1
Representing the actual features of an individual; not ideal.
a portrait bust; a portrait statue
verb
- 1
obsoleteTo portray; to draw.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Portrait in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | portrait |
| German | Portrait, Porträt , Hochformat |
| Portuguese | retrato |
| Spanish | retrato , modo retrato, modo vertical |
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 portrait come from?
From Middle French portraict, pourtraict, nominal use of the past participle of portraire (“portray”), from Latin prōtrahō (< prō- + trahō). Compare typologically English drawing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).