schizophrenia
/ˌskɪtsəˈfɹiniə/noun
schizophrenia is spelled S-C-H-I-Z-O-P-H-R-E-N-I-A. The wrong spelling people search most is schitzophrenia: about 260 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 120 of all searches for the word. Schizophrenia is a noun meaning “A psychiatric diagnosis denoting a persistent, often chronic, mental illness characterised by abnormal…”. The plural of schizophrenia is schizophrenias.
How do you spell schizophrenia?
Schizophrenia is spelled S-C-H-I-Z-O-P-H-R-E-N-I-A. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 121 of the searches for schizophrenia 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.
What does schizophrenia mean?
noun
- 1
A psychiatric diagnosis denoting a persistent, often chronic, mental illness characterised by abnormal perception, thinking, behavior and emotion, often marked by delusions.
- 2
proscribedA condition in which a person is supposed to have several distinct personalities; dissociative identity disorder.
- 3
informalAny condition in which disparate or mutually exclusive activities coexist; a lack of decision between options.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce schizophrenia?
- US /ˌskɪtsəˈfɹiniə/
- US /ˌskɪtsəˈfɹɛniə/
- UK /skɪtsə(ʊ)ˈfɹiːniə/
Schizophrenia 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-schizophrenia.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of schizophrenia
- schizophrenias plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is schizophrenia?
Schizophrenia appears 3.6 times per million words in written English, the 13,695th 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 abbreviate schizophrenia?
Wiktionary records one abbreviation of schizophrenia: SCZ.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Schizophrenia in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense mental disorder:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | schizophrénie |
| German | Schizophrenie |
| Portuguese | esquizofrenia |
| Spanish | esquizofrenia |
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 schizophrenia come from?
From German Schizophrenie (coined by Eugen Bleuler), from Ancient Greek σχίζω (skhízō, “to split”) + φρήν (phrḗn, “mind, heart, diaphragm”) + English -ia. A combination of schizo- + -phrenia.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).