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possession

/pəˈzɛʃn̩/noun

possession is spelled P-O-S-S-E-S-S-I-O-N. The wrong spelling people search most is posession: about 600 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 11 of all searches for the word. Possession is a noun meaning “A control or occupancy of something for which one does not necessarily have private property rights”. The plural of possession is possessions.

How many letters and syllables are in possession?

Letters10: P-O-S-S-E-S-S-I-O-N
Syllables3 (from its American pronunciation)
In writing24 times per million words; the 3,752nd most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searched2; the most searched, posession, about 600 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 possession?

Possession is spelled P-O-S-S-E-S-S-I-O-N. 2 wrong spellings are searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 2 in 10 of the searches for possession in either form.

possessionthe right spelling5,910 searches a month
posessiona missing s600 searches a month
possesiona missing s510 searches a month

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 possession?

Possession appears 24 times per million words in written English, the 3,752nd 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 possession?

  • /pəˈzɛʃn̩/

Possession 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: En-us-possession.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of possession

  • possessions plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • possessioning participle, present
  • possessioned participle, past

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

What does possession mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

noun

  1. 1

    A control or occupancy of something for which one does not necessarily have private property rights.

  2. 2

    Something that is owned.

    The car quickly became his most prized possession.

  3. 3

    An ownership; a taking, a holding, keeping something as one's own.

    The car is in my possession.

  4. 4

    A territory under the rule of another country.

    Réunion is the largest of France's overseas possessions.

  5. 5

    The condition or affliction of being possessed by a demon or other supernatural entity.

    Back then, people with psychiatric disorders were sometimes thought to be victims of demonic possession.

  6. 6

    The condition of being under the control of strong emotion or madness.

  7. 7

    A control of the ball; the opportunity to be on the offensive.

    The scoreboard shows a little football symbol next to the name of the team that has possession.

  8. 8

    A disposal of the ball during a game, i.e. a kick or a handball.

verb

  1. 1

    obsoleteTo invest with property.

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

How do you abbreviate possession?

Wiktionary records one abbreviation of possession: possn..

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

Possession in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Portugueseinvasão, posse (control or occupancy without legal ownership), possessão (something that is owned)
Spanishposesión, posesión natural (control or occupancy without legal ownership), tenencia, posesión civil (ownership; taking, holding, keeping something…), posesiones (a territory under the rule of another country)
Frenchbien (something that is owned), possession, propriété (ownership; taking, holding, keeping something…), possessions (a territory under the rule of another country)
GermanGut (something that is owned), Besessenheit (the state of being possessed by a spirit or…), Ballbesitz (control of the ball in a disputed sports game)

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 possession come from?

From Latin possessiō, possessiōnis. Equivalent to possess + -ion.

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

What to look up after possession