potassium
/pəˈtæsiəm/noun
potassium is spelled P-O-T-A-S-S-I-U-M: 9 letters and 4 syllables. It appears 3.8 times per million words in written English, the 13,321st most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a noun, potassium means “A soft, waxy, silvery reactive metal that is never found unbound in nature; an element with atomic number 19 and atomic weight of 39.0983” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of potassium is potassiums.
How many letters and syllables are in potassium?
| Letters | 9: P-O-T-A-S-S-I-U-M |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 4 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 3.8 times per million words; the 13,321st 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 potassium?
Potassium appears 3.8 times per million words in written English, the 13,321st 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 potassium?
- /pəˈtæsiəm/
Potassium 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: En-us-potassium.ogg, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Tesco250-potassium.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of potassium
- potassiums plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does potassium mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
A soft, waxy, silvery reactive metal that is never found unbound in nature; an element with atomic number 19 and atomic weight of 39.0983.
We all need potassium, and green vegetables are a good source.
- 2
An atom of this element.
This reaction substitutes a potassium for a sodium.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Potassium in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense the chemical element:
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 potassium come from?
Coined by British chemist Humphry Davy in 1807, from potassa (a Latinized form of potash) + -ium.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).