resilience
/ɹɪˈzɪl.jəns/noun
resilience is spelled R-E-S-I-L-I-E-N-C-E: 10 letters and 4 syllables. It appears 3.8 times per million words in written English, the 13,321st most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a noun, resilience means “The mental ability to recover quickly from depression, illness or misfortune” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of resilience is resiliences.
How many letters and syllables are in resilience?
| Letters | 10: R-E-S-I-L-I-E-N-C-E |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 4 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 3.8 times per million words; the 13,321st most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in search |
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).
How common is resilience?
Resilience appears 3.8 times per million words in written English, the 13,321st 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 resilience?
- UK /ɹɪˈzɪl.ɪ.əns/
- US /ɹɪˈzɪl.jəns/
- US /ɹɪˈzɪl.i.əns/
Resilience has 4 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: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-resilience.wav, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Simplificationalizer-resilience.wav, En-us-resilience.oga, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of resilience
- resiliences plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does resilience mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
The mental ability to recover quickly from depression, illness or misfortune.
Martin Seligman's impressive body of research showed that a pessimistic explanatory style carves a path to depression, while an optimistic explanatory style leads to resilience.
- 2
The physical property of material that can resume its shape after being stretched or deformed; elasticity.
- 3
The positive capacity of an organizational system or company to adapt and return to equilibrium after a crisis, failure or any kind of disruption, including: an outage, natural disasters, man-made disasters, terrorism, or similar (particularly IT systems, archives).
- 4
The capacity to resist destruction or defeat, especially when under extreme pressure.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Resilience in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | résilience |
| German | Resilienz, Belastbarkeit, Widerstandsfähigkeit , Elastizität, elastisches Verformungsarbeitsaufnahmevermögen |
| Portuguese | resiliência |
| Spanish | resiliencia , elasticidad |
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 resilience come from?
From Latin resiliō (“to spring back”) + English -ence.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).