suspicious
/səˈspɪʃ.əs/adjective
suspicious is spelled S-U-S-P-I-C-I-O-U-S. The wrong spelling people search most is suspicous: about 190 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 29 of all searches for the word. Suspicious is an adjective meaning “Arousing suspicion”.
How many letters and syllables are in suspicious?
| Letters | 10: S-U-S-P-I-C-I-O-U-S |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 3 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 12 times per million words; the 6,138th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, suspicous, about 190 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
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 suspicious?
Suspicious is spelled S-U-S-P-I-C-I-O-U-S. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 29 of the searches for suspicious 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 suspicious?
Suspicious appears 12 times per million words in written English, the 6,138th 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 suspicious?
- /səˈspɪʃ.əs/
Suspicious 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-suspicious.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of suspicious
- more suspicious comparative
- most suspicious superlative
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does suspicious mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
adjective
- 1
Arousing suspicion.
His suspicious behaviour brought him to the attention of the police.
- 2
Distrustful or tending to suspect.
We know he has a suspicious attitude to get-rich-quick schemes.
- 3
Expressing suspicion
She gave me a suspicious look.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you abbreviate suspicious?
Wiktionary records 2 abbreviations of suspicious: susp, suspish.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Suspicious in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | suspect, louche, chelou , méfiant, soupçonneux , suspicieux |
| German | verdächtig , misstrauisch, argwöhnisch |
| Portuguese | suspeito , desconfiado , suspeitoso |
| Spanish | sospechoso, suspecto , suspicaz, desconfiado, receloso |
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 suspicious come from?
From Old French sospecious, from Latin suspiciosus, suspitiosus.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).