ratify
/ˈɹætɪfaɪ/verb
ratify is spelled R-A-T-I-F-Y. The wrong spelling people search most is radify: about 80 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 18 of all searches for the word. Ratify is a verb meaning “To give formal consent to; make officially valid, to sign off on”.
How many letters and syllables are in ratify?
| Letters | 6: R-A-T-I-F-Y |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 3 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | about once in every 1 million words; the 31,168th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, radify, about 80 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 ratify?
Ratify is spelled R-A-T-I-F-Y. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 18 of the searches for ratify in either form.
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 ratify?
Ratify appears about once in every 1 million words in written English, the 31,168th 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 ratify?
- /ˈɹætɪfaɪ/
- /ˈɹætəfaɪ/
Ratify 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-ratify.ogg, En-au-ratify.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of ratify
- ratifies present, singular, he/she/it
- ratifying participle, present
- ratified participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does ratify mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
verb
- 1
To give formal consent to; make officially valid, to sign off on.
They ratified the treaty.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Ratify in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense give formal consent to:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | ratifier |
| German | bestätigen, ratifizieren |
| Portuguese | ratificar |
| Spanish | ratificar |
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.