Skip to main content
PlainSpell

prince

/pɹɪns/noun, verb

prince is spelled P-R-I-N-C-E: 6 letters and one syllable. It appears 52 times per million words in written English, the 1,941st most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a noun, prince means “Someone who is preeminent in their field; a great person” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of prince is princes.

How many letters and syllables are in prince?

Letters6: P-R-I-N-C-E
Syllables1 (from its American pronunciation)
In writing52 times per million words; the 1,941st most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searchednone measured in search
Same letters

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); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.

How common is prince?

Prince appears 52 times per million words in written English, the 1,941st 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 prince?

  • /pɹɪns/

Prince has one syllable (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-prince.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

What rhymes with prince?

No other word on PlainSpell ends in the same sounds as prince.

Spelled with the same letters in another order: pincer.

Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).

Forms of prince

  • princes plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • princing participle, present
  • princed participle, past

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

What does prince mean?

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

noun

  1. 1

    archaicA (male) ruler, a sovereign; a king, monarch.

  2. 2

    obsoleteA female monarch.

  3. 3

    Someone who is preeminent in their field; a great person.

    He is a prince among men.

  4. 4

    The (male) ruler or head of a principality.

  5. 5

    A male member of a royal family other than the ruler; especially (in the United Kingdom) the son or grandson of the monarch.

  6. 6

    A non-royal high title of nobility, especially in France and the Holy Roman Empire.

    Prince Louis de Broglie won the 1929 Nobel Prize in Physics.

  7. 7

    A type of court card used in tarot cards, the equivalent of the jack.

  8. 8

    The mushroom Agaricus augustus.

noun

as Prince
  1. 1

    The title of a prince.

verb

  1. 1

    rareTo behave or act like a prince.

  2. 2

    rareTo transform (someone) into a prince.

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

Prince in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchprince (male ruler or head of a principality)
GermanFürst (male ruler or head of a principality), Prinz, Königssohn, Königsenkel (son or male-line grandson of a reigning monarch), König ((figuratively) great person)
Portuguesepríncipe (male ruler or head of a principality), maioral ((figuratively) great person)
Spanishpríncipe, conde (male ruler or head of a principality), príncipe (firstborn), infante (son or male-line grandson of a reigning monarch)

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 prince come from?

From Middle English prince, from Anglo-Norman prince, from Latin prī̆nceps (“first head”), from prīmus (“first”) + capiō (“seize, take”). Cognate with Old English fruma (“prince, ruler”). Doublet of princeps and principe. Displaced English atheling (“prince”), from Middle English, from Old English æþeling (“prince”). Displaced also Middle English kinebarn (from cynebearn, literally “kinbairn”, i.e. “royal child”), alder < ealdor (“elder, leader, chief, prince, king”), and drighten < dryhten (“lord”).

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

What to look up after prince