university
u·ni·ver·si·ty/ˌjunəˈvərsədi/noun
university is spelled U-N-I-V-E-R-S-I-T-Y, 5 syllables: u·ni·ver·si·ty. The wrong spelling people search most is univeristy: about 260 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 128 of all searches for the word. University is a noun meaning “An institution of higher education that provides facilities for teaching, research, and the conferral of…”. The plural of university is universities.
How many letters and syllables are in university?
| Letters | 10: U-N-I-V-E-R-S-I-T-Y |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 5: u·ni·ver·si·ty |
| In writing | 245 times per million words; the 402nd most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 6; the most searched, univeristy, about 260 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation; 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 university?
University is spelled U-N-I-V-E-R-S-I-T-Y. 6 wrong spellings are searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 58 of the searches for university 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 university?
University appears 245 times per million words in written English, the 402nd 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 university?
- UK /junɪˈvɜːsəti/
- US /ˌjunəˈvərsədi/
- US /junɪˈvɝsəti/
University has 5 syllables, split u·ni·ver·si·ty in writing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-uk-university.ogg, En-us-university.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of university
- universities plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does university mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
An institution of higher education that provides facilities for teaching, research, and the conferral of academic degrees across undergraduate, graduate, and often professional levels.
She's studying mathematics at university.
- 2
obsoleteThe entirety of a group; all members of a class.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you abbreviate university?
Wiktionary records 3 abbreviations of university: U, Univ., uni.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
University in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense institution of higher education:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | université, fac, univ |
| German | Universität, Hochschule, Uni |
| Portuguese | universidade |
| Spanish | universidad |
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 university come from?
From Middle English universite (“institution of higher learning, body of persons constituting a university”) from Anglo-Norman université, from Old French universitei, from Medieval Latin stem of universitas, in juridical and Late Latin "a number of persons associated into one body, a society, company, community, guild, corporation, etc"; in Latin, "the whole, aggregate," from universus (“whole, entire”). By surface analysis, universe + -ity.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).