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PlainSpell

ton

/tʌn/noun

ton is spelled T-O-N: 3 letters and one syllable. It appears 19 times per million words in written English, the 4,365th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). People search “ton vs tonne” about 8,100 times a month (Google, United States). As a noun, ton means “The short ton of 2000 pounds (about 907 kg), 20 hundredweights of 100 pounds avoirdupois each” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of ton is tons.

How many letters and syllables are in ton?

Letters3: T-O-N
Syllables1 (from its American pronunciation)
In writing19 times per million words; the 4,365th most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searchednone measured in search
Pairs people search
Rhymes with
Same letters

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); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.

How common is ton?

Ton appears 19 times per million words in written English, the 4,365th 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 ton?

  • /tʌn/
  • /tʊn/

As a noun (“Fashion, the current style, the vogue”): /tɔ̃/, /tɒn/.

Ton has one syllable (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-ton.ogg, En-au-ton.ogg, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-ton2.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Words people confuse with ton

Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).

ton vs tonne8,100 G
ton vs tun0 B

Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).

What rhymes with ton?

The 12 most written words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as ton from its last stressed vowel (/ɔ/, British pronunciation):

Spelled with the same letters in another order: not.

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 ton

  • tons plural

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What does ton mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

noun

  1. 1

    The short ton of 2000 pounds (about 907 kg), 20 hundredweights of 100 pounds avoirdupois each.

  2. 2

    The long ton of 2240 pounds (about 1016 kg), 20 hundredweights of 112 pounds avoirdupois each.

  3. 3

    The metric ton of 1000 kilograms (about 2205 lb), 10 quintals of 100 kilograms each.

  4. 4

    The measurement ton of (US) 40 or (UK) 42 cubic feet (about 1.1 or 1.2 m³).

  5. 5

    The register ton of 100 cubic feet (about 2.83 m³).

  6. 6

    Any large, excessive, or overwhelming amount of anything.

    I’ve got a ton of work to do.

  7. 7

    A unit of thermal power equal to 12,000 BTU/h (about 3.5 kW), approximating the idealized rate of cooling provided by uniform isothermal melting of 1 short ton of ice per day at 0°C.

    Their main problem is that they somehow believe that a 12-ton unit can handle this entire building.

  8. 8

    UKcolloquial100 pounds sterling.

  9. 9

    Fashion, the current style, the vogue.

  10. 10

    Fashionable society; those in style.

  11. 11

    Synonym of tunny, particularly the common tunny or horse mackerel.

noun

as TON
  1. 1

    Initialism of threshold odor number.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Ton in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchtonne (various units of mass notionally equivalent to…), flopée (any hyperbolically or oppressively large amount)
GermanTonne (various units of mass notionally equivalent to…)
Portuguesetonelada (various units of mass notionally equivalent to…)
Spanishtonelada (various units of mass notionally equivalent to…), a base de bien, a cholón, a cascoporro, a porrillo, a espuertas (any hyperbolically or oppressively large amount)

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 ton come from?

Variant of tun (“cask”), influenced by Old French tonne (“ton”).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What to look up after ton