summary
/ˈsʌm.ə.ɹi/adjective, noun
summary is spelled S-U-M-M-A-R-Y. The wrong spelling people search most is sumary: about 120 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 1,111 of all searches for the word. Summary is an adjective meaning “Concise, brief, or presented in a condensed form; presenting information in such a form”.
How many letters and syllables are in summary?
| Letters | 7: S-U-M-M-A-R-Y |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 3 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 23 times per million words; the 3,814th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, sumary, about 120 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
| Pairs people search | |
| Sounds like |
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 summary?
Summary is spelled S-U-M-M-A-R-Y. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 1,174 of the searches for summary 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 summary?
Summary appears 23 times per million words in written English, the 3,814th 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 summary?
- /ˈsʌm.ə.ɹi/
Summary 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-summary.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Words people confuse with summary
Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).
Sounds like: summery (Wiktionary's homophone list; some hold only in some accents).
Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).
Forms of summary
- more summary comparative
- most summary superlative
- summaries plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does summary mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
adjective
- 1
Concise, brief, or presented in a condensed form; presenting information in such a form.
Near-synonym: abstractive
- 2
Performed speedily, without formal ceremony, and (especially) without regard to legality.
Near-synonym: extrajudicial
- 3
Performed by omitting the procedures of a full trial, but within a legally valid framework.
The matter was brought to a close by summary dismissal of the cases.
noun
- 1
An abstract or a condensed presentation of the substance of a body of material.
I'd forgotten what happened in the first Harry Potter book so I read a summary of the narrative before starting the second one.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you abbreviate summary?
Wiktionary records one abbreviation of summary: smry..
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Summary in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | sommaire, résumé , récapitulation, compte rendu |
| German | zusammenfassend , Zusammenfassung , standrechtlich |
| Portuguese | sumário, resumido , resumir , resumo |
| Spanish | sumario , resumen , somero , apurado, a todo dar |
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 summary come from?
From Middle English summary, from Medieval Latin summārius, from Latin summa (“total, sum”) + -ārius (suffix forming adjectives).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).