rebus
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Detailed reference entry for the English word "rebus", 5-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Wiktionary, and usage frequency ranked against an open word-frequency list covering the top 100,000 English words. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "rebus" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "rebus" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
The verdict
“rebus” is an uncommon English word, ranked #51,350 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #51,350
- frequency rank, English
- 5
- letters
Dominant Wiktionary sense: An arrangement of pictures, symbols, or words representing phrases or words, especially as a word puzzle.
Compare similar words
See how rebus compares against similar English words.
Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | rebus |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈɹiːbəs/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #51,350 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “rebus” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for rebus is 5 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈɹiːbəs/. Corpus data places it at rank #51,350 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. Wiktionary records 4 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No misspelling variants are generated for rebus in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Etymologically, the entry records: From French rébus (“rebus (puzzle); ambiguity; word used in an oblique sense; unintelligible remark”), or directly from its probable etymon Latin rēbus, the ablative plural of rēs (“object, stuff, thing; issue, matter, subject, topic”), ultimately from Prot… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is rebus, spelled R-E-B-U-S, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1An arrangement of pictures, symbols, or words representing phrases or words, especially as a word puzzle.
- 2A pictographic component of a compound character (e.g. sinograph) used to hint at the pronunciation of the compound.
- 3An arrangement of pictures on a coat of arms which suggests the name of the person to whom it belongs.
- 4A type of crossword puzzle in which some squares contain entire words, or symbols representing words, instead of single letters.
Etymology
From French rébus (“rebus (puzzle); ambiguity; word used in an oblique sense; unintelligible remark”), or directly from its probable etymon Latin rēbus, the ablative plural of rēs (“object, stuff, thing; issue, matter, subject, topic”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *reh₁ís (“goods; wealth”). The connection between the English word and its Latin etymon is unclear. further etymology The following possibilities have been suggested, but according to the Oxford English Dictionary are problematic: * According to the French scholar Gilles Ménage (1613–1692) in Les origines de la langue françoise (The Origins of the French Language, 1650), it is taken from the phrase de rebus quae geruntur (“concerning the things that are taking place”) which was used in 16th-century Picardy as the name for satirical writings on contemporary subjects containing picture-riddles that were composed for an annual carnival. However, the term rebus de Picardie is first attested later than the word rébus, and so could simply refer to rebuses popular in Picardy at the time. * Alternatively, it could be from the phrase nōn verbīs sed rēbus meaning “not by words but by things”, but this “encounters difficulties in the chronology of the senses in French”.
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #51,350 in English
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Using “rebus”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is R-E-B-U-S — every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ˈɹiːbəs/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter R in our English index: