tinnitus
/ˈtɪn.ɪ.təs/noun
tinnitus is spelled T-I-N-N-I-T-U-S. The wrong spelling people search most is tinnitis: about 790 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 25 of all searches for the word. Tinnitus is a noun meaning “The experience of auditory sensations, such as a ringing or pulsating sound, occurring in the absence of any…”. The plural of tinnitus is tinnituses; Wiktionary also lists tinniti (hypercorrect).
How do you spell tinnitus?
Tinnitus is spelled T-I-N-N-I-T-U-S. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 25 of the searches for tinnitus 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 tinnitus mean?
noun
- 1
The experience of auditory sensations, such as a ringing or pulsating sound, occurring in the absence of any external stimulus.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce tinnitus?
- /ˈtɪn.ɪ.təs/
- /ˈtɪn.ə.təs/
- /tɪˈnaɪ.təs/
Tinnitus 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: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-tinnitus.wav, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-tinnitus2.wav, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-tinnitus3.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of tinnitus
- tinnituses plural
- tinniti hypercorrect, plural, rare
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is tinnitus?
Tinnitus appears about once in every 1 million words in written English, the 35,748th 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).
Tinnitus in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense perception of nonexistent noise:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | acouphène |
| German | Tinnitus, Ohrensausen |
| Portuguese | zumbido, tinido, tinnitus, acufeno |
| Spanish | tinnitus, acúfeno |
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 tinnitus come from?
Learned borrowing from Latin tinnītus (“a jingling, ringing”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).