venality
/vɪˈnælɪti/noun
venality is a noun meaning “The fact or state of being for sale, especially with reference to bribes or corruption” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled V-E-N-A-L-I-T-Y and has 4 syllables, and it appears about once in every 16 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of venality is venalities.
What does venality mean?
noun
- 1
The fact or state of being for sale, especially with reference to bribes or corruption.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce venality?
- /vɪˈnælɪti/
Venality has 4 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-venality.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of venality
- venalities plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is venality?
Venality appears about once in every 16 million words in written English, the 119,826th 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).
Venality in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense being for sale:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| German | Käuflichkeit |
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 venality come from?
From venal + -ity, from French vénalité or Latin vēnālitās, from vēnālis (“venal”), from vēnum; compare English vend.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).