Syllable Counter

What is a syllable?

A syllable is a single beat of spoken sound, built around one vowel sound. “Cat” has one syllable, “ta·ble” has two, and “beau·ti·ful” has three. Each syllable usually has a vowel sound at its center, with consonants around it: the vowel sound matters, not the number of vowel letters. That is why “bread” (two vowels, one sound) has one syllable and “i·de·a” (three vowels, three sounds) has three.

This syllable counter looks up every word in a pronouncing dictionary of more than 50,000 English words (plus names), so it counts the way words are actually said — not just by counting vowel letters. It shows where each word breaks into syllables, which syllable is stressed, and which words can be said more than one way.

How to use the syllable counter

1. Type or paste a word, sentence, poem, or song lyrics. The total, words, lines, average syllables per word, and reading grade update as you type.
2. Type a single word to see its syllable count, how it divides (ev·er·y), and where the stress falls.
3. Paste a poem on separate lines to count the syllables in each line. Pick a form — haiku, tanka, cinquain, limerick, sonnet, or your own pattern — to check every line against it.
4. Read the rhythm: stressed syllables are shown in bold, and lines that follow a regular meter are labeled, like “iambic pentameter”.
5. Find words with a given number of syllables in the second tab — filter by part of speech, topic, stress, and letters, then copy the list.

Words the dictionary doesn’t know (brand names, made-up words, typos) are estimated from their spelling and marked with a ~. Everything runs in your browser: nothing you type is uploaded or stored.

How many syllables are in…?

These are the words people most often ask about. Stressed syllables are in bold. Where two counts are given, both pronunciations are common — use the one that matches how you say the word.

Fun fact: “syllable” has three syllables (syl·la·ble), and “haiku” has two.

How to count syllables yourself

Three quick methods work for most words:

• The chin method. Put your hand flat under your chin and say the word slowly. Your jaw drops once for each syllable.
• Clap it out. Say the word and clap on every beat: “but-ter-fly” gets three claps.
• Count vowel sounds. Each vowel sound you hear is one syllable. Count sounds, not letters: “boat” has two vowel letters but one sound.

Tricky cases

• Silent e adds no syllable: “make”, “home”, “love·ly”, “care·ful”.
• Consonant + le at the end is its own syllable: “ta·ble”, “lit·tle”, “can·dle”.
• The -ed ending is only a syllable after t or d: “want·ed” (2) but “jumped” (1).
• The -es ending adds a syllable after s, z, x, ch, sh, or a soft g/c: “box·es”, “hors·es”, “pric·es”, but not “makes”.
• Two vowels side by side can be one sound (“rain”, “boat”) or two (“li·on”, “po·em”, “qui·et”, “i·de·a”).
• Words said two ways — “fire”, “hour”, “every”, “family”, “chocolate” — have two correct counts. Poets and songwriters use whichever fits the rhythm.

How to divide words into syllables

When you split a written word into syllables, a few classic rules cover most words. The counter shows each word divided with a dot (·), following these rules and the word’s pronunciation.

Dictionaries don’t always agree on where breaks fall in writing (is it “pi·lot” or “pil·ot”?), but they do agree on the number of syllables. For hyphenating words at the end of a line, follow your dictionary or style guide.

Stressed syllables (word stress)

In English words with two or more syllables, one syllable is said louder and longer than the others — the stressed syllable. “PHO·to·graph”, “pho·TOG·ra·pher” and “pho·to·GRAPH·ic” show how stress can move as a word grows. Stress can even change a word’s meaning: a REC·ord (noun) versus to re·CORD (verb), a PRES·ent versus to pre·SENT.

The counter shows the main stress in bold for every word it knows. In the word finder, you can list words by stress position — handy for pronunciation practice, ESL lessons, and writing lyrics that land on the beat.

Open and closed syllables: the six syllable types

Reading teachers sort syllables into six types. Knowing the type tells you how the vowel sounds, which makes it easier to read and spell new words.

An open syllable ends with its vowel, so the vowel “says its name” (the long sound): “me”, “ba” in “ba·by”. A closed syllable is closed off by a consonant, so the vowel is short: “met”, “rab” in “rab·bit”.

Words by number of syllables

Here are common English words sorted by syllable count, with the stressed syllable in bold. Open the Find words by syllables tab above for thousands more — filter them by part of speech, topic (animals, food, feelings…), first letter, or stress, and copy the list.

Haiku syllable counter (5-7-5)

A traditional English haiku has three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables — 17 in total — and usually captures a single moment in nature or a season. Paste your three lines and the counter checks each one, tells you how many syllables to add or cut, and flags lines that fit only if a word like “fire” is said the shorter or longer way. Here is a haiku written for this page:

Morning syllables
counted softly on my hand —
five, then seven, five

Japanese haiku actually count on (sound units), which are shorter than English syllables, so many modern English haiku poets write fewer than 17 syllables. For school assignments and contests, 5-7-5 is the rule to follow.

Syllable patterns of popular poem forms

The counter checks haiku, tanka, cinquain, limerick, and sonnet directly. For anything else — ballad stanzas, a song verse, a rap bar — choose Custom pattern and type the syllables you want per line, such as “8, 6, 8, 6”.

Meter and iambic pentameter

Meter is the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry. It is measured in feet:

• Iamb (da-DUM): a·bout, to·day
• Trochee (DUM-da): gar·den, hap·py
• Anapest (da-da-DUM): un·der·stand
• Dactyl (DUM-da-da): beau·ti·ful

The number of feet names the line length: trimeter (3), tetrameter (4), pentameter (5), hexameter (6). So iambic pentameter is five iambs — ten syllables going da-DUM five times, as in Shakespeare’s “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”

The counter scans each line using dictionary stress for longer words and treats one-syllable words flexibly (small words like “the” and “of” lean unstressed), then names the closest meter. Poets bend the rules on purpose, so treat it as a helpful first reading — your ear has the final say.

Syllables and reading level

Longer words make text harder to read, so readability formulas count syllables. The counter shows the Flesch reading ease (higher is easier; 60–70 is plain English) and the Flesch–Kincaid grade level (the US school grade that can read the text comfortably). Both use average sentence length and average syllables per word, so they are most reliable for a paragraph or more. For a full breakdown of your writing, also try the Word Counter.

Why syllable counts can differ

Syllables depend on pronunciation, and pronunciation varies by accent and speed. “Every” and “family” often lose a middle syllable in everyday speech, “fire” and “hour” can be one beat or two, and British and American speakers say some words differently. When a word has two common pronunciations, the counter shows both counts, and the poem checker accepts a line that works either way. The counts come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, a widely used open pronunciation dictionary of American English, extended by Linguaholic with syllable breaks and word information.

Related tools

Counting words or characters instead? Use the Word Counter or Sentence Counter. Looking for inspiration? The Random Word Generator gives writing prompts, and the Mad Libs Generator is a fun way to practice parts of speech.