turnstile
turn·stile/ˈtəɹnstaɪl/noun
turnstile is spelled T-U-R-N-S-T-I-L-E, 2 syllables: turn·stile. The wrong spelling people search most is turnstyle: about 690 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 2 in 10 of all searches for the word. Turnstile is a noun meaning “A rotating mechanical device that controls and counts passage between public areas, especially one that only…”. The plural of turnstile is turnstiles.
How do you spell turnstile?
Turnstile is spelled T-U-R-N-S-T-I-L-E. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 2 in 10 of the searches for turnstile 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 turnstile mean?
noun
- 1
A rotating mechanical device that controls and counts passage between public areas, especially one that only allows passage after a charge has been paid.
an efficient system for funneling crowds through turnstiles
- 2
A similar device in a footpath to allow people through one at a time while preventing the passage of cattle.
- 3
The ⊢ symbol used to represent logical entailment (deducibility relation), especially of the syntactic type; i.e., syntactic consequence. (Such symbol can be read as "prove(s)" or "give(s)". )
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce turnstile?
- UK /ˈtəːnstaɪl/
- US /ˈtəɹnstaɪl/
Turnstile has 2 syllables, split turn·stile in writing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-turnstile.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of turnstile
- turnstiles plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is turnstile?
Turnstile appears about once in every 4 million words in written English, the 60,074th 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).
Turnstile in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense rotating mechanical device:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | tourniquet |
| German | Drehkreuz |
| Portuguese | roleta, catraca, borboleta, torniquete |
| Spanish | molinete, torniquete, torno |
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.