el
Spanish, article
el is spelled E-L (2 letters) and appears 28,184 times per million words in written Spanish, the 4th most frequent Spanish word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). El is a Spanish article meaning “masculine singular definite article; the” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). With an accent, él is a different word: “he, him, masculine personal third person subject and disjunctive…”. The Spanish Wiktionary (Wikcionario) defines it as “Artículo determinado masculino singular”.
What does el mean in English?
article
- 1
masculine singular definite article; the
article
- 1
feminine singular definite article used before nouns which start with a stressed /a/
el alma, las almas
pronoun
- 1
masculinehe, him, masculine personal third person subject and disjunctive pronoun (used as a subject and after prepositions)
- 2
masculineit, masculine non-personal third-person subject and disjunctive pronoun (usually used after prepositions to refer to masculine nouns)
Source: English Wiktionary, Spanish section, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0).
How Spanish dictionaries define it
pronoun: 1. Nominativo y preposicional del pronombre personal de la tercera persona del singular en el género masculino.
article: 1. Artículo determinado masculino singular.
article: 1. Variante de la. Por razones de eufonía, antecede a ciertos nombres que normalmente llevarían el artículo "la", que son aquellos que comienzan con el fonema /'a/ tónico ("a-" o "ha-" tónicas). El sustantivo mismo continúa siendo femenino.
The definition in the Spanish Wiktionary (Wikcionario), in Spanish.
Source: Spanish Wiktionary (Wikcionario), dump of September 1, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org.
Forms of el
- los plural
- la feminine
- las feminine plural
- lo neuter
- ella feminine
- ello neuter
- ellos masculine plural
- ellas feminine plural
Source: English Wiktionary and Spanish Wiktionary (Wikcionario) (dumps of September 2, 2026 and September 1, 2026).
English words that translate to el
Source: the translation tables of the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026.
How common is el in Spanish?
el appears 28,184 times per million words in written Spanish.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).