underwear
/ˈʌndɚˌwɛɹ/noun
underwear is spelled U-N-D-E-R-W-E-A-R. The wrong spelling people search most is underware: about 890 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 18 of all searches for the word. Underwear is a noun meaning “Clothes worn next to the skin, underneath outer clothing”. The plural of underwear is underwears.
How many letters and syllables are in underwear?
| Letters | 9: U-N-D-E-R-W-E-A-R |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 3 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 9.1 times per million words; the 7,553rd most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, underware, about 890 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 underwear?
Underwear is spelled U-N-D-E-R-W-E-A-R. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 18 of the searches for underwear 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 underwear?
Underwear appears 9.1 times per million words in written English, the 7,553rd 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 underwear?
- UK /ˈʌndəwɛə/
- US /ˈʌndɚˌwɛɹ/
- US /ˈʌndɚwɚ/
Underwear 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-underwear.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of underwear
- underwears plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does underwear mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
Clothes worn next to the skin, underneath outer clothing.
- 2
colloquialUnderpants (boxers, briefs, panties, etc) and often bras.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Underwear in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense clothes worn next to the skin:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | sous-vêtement |
| German | Unterwäsche |
| Portuguese | roupa de baixo, roupa íntima, roupa interior |
| Spanish | ropa interior, calzones, chones |
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.