Word.ws English Dictionary

ens

/ˈɛnz/

ens noun: an entity or being; an existing thing, as opposed to a quality or attribute. Also the plural of en.

Noun (1)

ens (plural enses or entia)

  1. An entity or being; an existing thing, as opposed to a quality or attribute.
    • Forms sphered in fire with trembling light array'd, / Ens without weight, and substance without shade […].1791, Erasmus Darwin, The Economy of Vegetation, J. Johnson, page 41
    • the Nature of the Supreme Ens1860, John Henry Macmahon, A treatise on metaphysics: chiefly in reference to revealed religion, page 195
  2. (historical) Something supposed to condense within itself all the virtues and qualities of a substance from which it is extracted; an essence, an active principle.
    • Here he states that there are five ‘active principles’ – the five Enses or entia – that influence our bodies and give rise to disease […]2006, Philip Ball, The Devil's Doctor, Arrow, published 2007, page 245

Noun (2) capitalized: ENS

ENS (plural ENSs)

  1. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of enteric nervous system.

Proper noun capitalized: ENS

ENS

  1. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of Ethereum Name Service.
    • The components involved in ENS loosely mimic those of DNS, with the difference that they are implemented as smart contracts within the Ethereum network.2019, Santiago Palladino, Ethereum for Web Developers, Apress, →ISBN, page 267

Noun (3) capitalized: ENs

ENs

  1. (plural) plural of EN

Noun (4) capitalized: Ens

Ens

  1. Alternative letter-case form of ens.

Also used as

ens is also the plural of en.

Forms of ens

pluralenses
pluralentia
pluralENSs

Plural of ens: enses or entia

Origin of ens

From Late Latin ēns (“thing”), from esse (“to be”). See entity.

Inflected forms.

Words formed from ens

Words that rhyme with ens

6 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about ens

What does ens mean?
Ens means an entity or being; an existing thing, as opposed to a quality or attribute.
What part of speech is ens?
Ens can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce ens?
Ens is pronounced /ˈɛnz/ (UK).
What is the plural of ens?
The plural of ens is enses.

Words near ens in the dictionary

  1. enround
  2. enrounded
  3. enrounding
  4. enrounds
  5. enroute
  6. ens
  7. ens entium
  8. ens reale
  9. Ens.
  10. ENSA
  11. ensaculin

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ens (page history and authors); ENS (page history and authors); ENs (page history and authors); Ens (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-ens.wav.

Cite this entry: “ens.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ens. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.