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prescription

/pɹəˈskɹɪp.ʃən/noun

prescription is spelled P-R-E-S-C-R-I-P-T-I-O-N. The wrong spelling people search most is perscription: about 2,470 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 16 of all searches for the word. Prescription is a noun meaning “A written order from an authorized medical practitioner for provision of a medicine or other treatment, such…”. The plural of prescription is prescriptions.

How many letters and syllables are in prescription?

Letters12: P-R-E-S-C-R-I-P-T-I-O-N
Syllables3 (from its American pronunciation)
In writing10 times per million words; the 7,121st most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searched1; the most searched, perscription, about 2,470 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 prescription?

Prescription is spelled P-R-E-S-C-R-I-P-T-I-O-N. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 16 of the searches for prescription in either form.

prescriptionthe right spelling36,830 searches a month
perscriptionr and e swapped2,470 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 prescription?

Prescription appears 10 times per million words in written English, the 7,121st 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 prescription?

  • /pɹəˈskɹɪp.ʃən/
  • /pɝˈskɹɪp.ʃən/

Prescription 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-prescription.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Words people confuse with prescription

Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).

prescription vs proscription20 B

Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).

Forms of prescription

  • prescriptions plural
  • præscription

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

What does prescription mean?

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

noun

  1. 1

    A written order from an authorized medical practitioner for provision of a medicine or other treatment, such as (ophthalmology) the specific lenses needed for a pair of glasses.

    The surgeon had written thousands of prescriptions for pain killers without proper examinations before the police raided the clinic.

  2. 2

    The medicine or treatment provided by such an order.

    I need you to pick up gramma's prescriptions on your way home.

  3. 3

    Any plan of treatment or handling; the treatment or handling thus provided.

    Early to bed and early to rise is a prescription for a long, healthy, and terrible life.

  4. 4

    Synonym of enactment, the act of establishing a law, regulation, etc., particularly in writing; an instance of this.

  5. 5

    The act of establishing or formalizing ideal norms for language use, as opposed to describing the actual norms of such use; an instance of this.

  6. 6

    An established time period within which a right must be exercised and after which it is null and permanently unenforceable.

  7. 7

    An established time period after which a person who has uninterruptedly, peacefully, and publicly used another's property acquires full ownership of it.

  8. 8

    obsoleteSynonym of self-restraint, limiting of one's actions especially according to a moral code or social conventions.

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

Prescription in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchordonnance (written order for the administration of a…), prescription (prescribed medicine), prescription extinctive, prescription libératoire (extinctive or liberative prescription – see…)
GermanRezept, Verschreibung (written order for the administration of a…), Verjährung (extinctive or liberative prescription – see…), Rechtssetzung (the act of establishing a law or regulation in…)
Portuguesereceita (written order for the administration of a…), prescrição extintiva (extinctive or liberative prescription – see…)
Spanishreceta, medida (written order for the administration of a…), remedios recetados, medicinas, medicamentos (prescribed medicine)

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 prescription come from?

Borrowed from Middle French, from Old French prescripcion, from Latin praescriptio (“preface; pretext; something written ahead of time”), from prae- (“pre-, before”) + scribere (“to write”) + -tio (“-tion, forming nouns”). Equivalent to prescribe + -tion.

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

What to look up after prescription