spean
/spiːn/obsolete
spean is spelled S-P-E-A-N: 5 letters. It appears about once in every 24 million words in written English, the 148,541st most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a noun, spean means “A teat or nipple of a cow” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of spean is speans.
How many letters and syllables are in spean?
| Letters | 5: S-P-E-A-N |
|---|---|
| In writing | about once in every 24 million words; the 148,541st most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in search |
| Same letters |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How common is spean?
Spean appears about once in every 24 million words in written English, the 148,541st 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 spean?
- /spiːn/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What rhymes with spean?
No other word on PlainSpell ends in the same sounds as spean.
Spelled with the same letters in another order: aspen, snape.
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 spean
- spane
- spene
- speen
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does spean mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
archaicA teat or nipple of a cow.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Where does spean come from?
From Middle English *spene, *spane, from Old English spane, spanu (“teat”), from Proto-West Germanic *spanu, *spenu, from Proto-Germanic *spenô (“nipple”), from Proto-Indo-European *pstḗn (“breast; teat”). Cognate with West Frisian spien (“nipple”), Dutch speen (“nipple”), Danish spene (“teat”), Swedish spene (“teat, nipple, dug”), Icelandic speni (“teat”). Alternatively a borrowing from Dutch speen (“nipple, teat”), from the same Proto-Germanic origin as above.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).