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PlainSpell

progress

/ˈpɹɑ.ɡɹɛs/noun, verb

progress is spelled P-R-O-G-R-E-S-S. The wrong spelling people search most is progess: about 210 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 66 of all searches for the word. Progress is a noun meaning “Movement or advancement through a series of events, or points in time; development through time”. The plural of progress is progresses.

How many letters and syllables are in progress?

Letters8: P-R-O-G-R-E-S-S
Syllables2 (from its American pronunciation)
In writing60 times per million words; the 1,724th most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searched1; the most searched, progess, about 210 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 progress?

Progress is spelled P-R-O-G-R-E-S-S. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 66 of the searches for progress in either form.

progressthe right spelling13,670 searches a month
progessa missing r210 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 progress?

Progress appears 60 times per million words in written English, the 1,724th 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 progress?

  • UK /ˈpɹəʊ.ɡɹɛs/
  • US /ˈpɹɑ.ɡɹɛs/
  • US /-ɹəs/

As a verb (“To move, go, or proceed forward; to advance”): /pɹəˈɡɹɛs/, /pɹəˈɡɹes/.

Progress 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-uk-progress.ogg, En-us-progress-noun.ogg, En-us-progress-verb.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of progress

  • progresses plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • progressing participle, present
  • progressed participle, past

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

What does progress mean?

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

noun

  1. 1

    Movement or advancement through a series of events, or points in time; development through time.

    Testing for the new antidote is currently in progress.

  2. 2

    Specifically, advancement to a higher or more developed state; development, growth.

    Science has made extraordinary progress in the last fifty years.

  3. 3

    An official journey made by a monarch or other high personage; a state journey, a circuit.

  4. 4

    archaicA journey forward; travel.

  5. 5

    Movement onwards, forwards, or towards a specific objective or direction; advance.

    The thick branches overhanging the path made progress difficult.

verb

  1. 1

    To move, go, or proceed forward; to advance.

    Visitors progress through the museum at their own pace.

  2. 2

    To develop.

    Societies progress unevenly.

  3. 3

    To improve; to become better or more complete.

  4. 4

    To expedite.

noun

as Progress
  1. 1

    Any of a series of Soviet, later Russian spacecraft.

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

Progress in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchprogrès (advancement to a more developed state), amélioration (movement onwards or forwards), progresser (to move forward)
GermanFortschritt (advancement to a more developed state)
Portugueseprogresso (advancement to a more developed state), seguir (to move forward), progredir (to become better or more complete)
Spanishprogreso (advancement to a more developed state), progresar (to become better or more complete)

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 progress come from?

From Middle English progresse, from Old French progres (“a going forward”), from Latin prōgressus (“an advance”), from the participle stem of prōgredī (“to go forward, advance, develop”), from pro- (“forth, before”) + gradi (“to walk, go”). Displaced native Old English forþgang.

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

What to look up after progress