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PlainSpell

proprietary

/pɹəˈpɹaɪ.əˌtɛɹ.i/adjective, noun

proprietary is spelled P-R-O-P-R-I-E-T-A-R-Y. The wrong spelling people search most is propietary: about 180 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 38 of all searches for the word. Proprietary is an adjective meaning “Of or relating to property or ownership”.

How many letters and syllables are in proprietary?

Letters11: P-R-O-P-R-I-E-T-A-R-Y
Syllables5 (from its American pronunciation)
In writing4.7 times per million words; the 11,685th most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searched1; the most searched, propietary, about 180 Bing searches a month (all of them)
Rhymes with

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

How do you spell proprietary?

Proprietary is spelled P-R-O-P-R-I-E-T-A-R-Y. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 38 of the searches for proprietary in either form.

proprietarythe right spelling6,740 searches a month
propietarya missing r180 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 proprietary?

Proprietary appears 4.7 times per million words in written English, the 11,685th 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 proprietary?

  • UK /pɹəˈpɹaɪ.ə.tə.ɹi/
  • UK /pɹəˈpɹaɪ.ə.tɹi/
  • US /pɹəˈpɹaɪ.əˌtɛɹ.i/

Proprietary has 5 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-proprietary.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

What rhymes with proprietary?

One word on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as proprietary from its last stressed vowel (/aɪətɛɹi/):

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 proprietary

  • more proprietary comparative
  • most proprietary superlative
  • proprietaries plural

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

What does proprietary mean?

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

adjective

  1. 1

    Of or relating to property or ownership.

    proprietary rights

  2. 2

    Owning something; having ownership.

    the proprietary class

  3. 3

    Created or manufactured exclusively by the owner or licensee of intellectual property rights, as with a patent or trade secret.

    The continuous profitability of the company is based on its many proprietary products.

  4. 4

    Nonstandard and controlled by one particular organization.

    a proprietary extension to the HTML standard for Web page structure

  5. 5

    Privately owned.

    a proprietary lake;   a proprietary chapel

  6. 6

    Possessive, jealous, or territorial.

noun

  1. 1

    A proprietor or owner.

  2. 2

    A body of proprietors, taken collectively.

  3. 3

    The rights of a proprietor.

  4. 4

    A monk who had reserved goods and belongings to himself, notwithstanding his renunciation of all at the time of profession.

  5. 5

    A company doing legitimate business while also serving as a front for espionage.

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

How do you abbreviate proprietary?

Wiktionary records one abbreviation of proprietary: Pty.

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

Proprietary in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
GermanEigentums-, Eigentümer- (relating to property or ownership), besitzend (of or relating to the quality of being an owner), proprietär, urheberrechtlich geschützt, geschützt (created or manufactured exclusively by the IPR…)
Portugueseproprietário (relating to property or ownership), privado, particular (privately owned)
Spanishde propiedad (relating to property or ownership), privativo (created or manufactured exclusively by the IPR…), privado, particular (privately owned)

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 proprietary come from?

From French propriétaire, from Latin proprietārius. By surface analysis, propriety + -ary. Compare with the Latin proprietas (“property”) and proprius (“ownership”).

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

What to look up after proprietary