Word.ws English Dictionary

phenom

/ˈfiːnɒm/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

uncommon/fəˈnɒm/

phenom noun: someone or something that is phenomenal, especially a promising young player in sports like baseball, American football, basketball, tennis, and golf.

Noun

phenom (plural phenoms)

  1. Someone or something that is phenomenal, especially a promising young player in sports like baseball, American football, basketball, tennis, and golf.
    • Managed and shortstopped by George Wright and full of league stalwarts—Joe Start, Paul Hines, and Jim O'rourke—they also had 1-year-old phenom Monte Ward as primary moundsman (teams now generally used multiple pitchers).2017, Brandon Isleib, Playing for a Winner, page 77
    • It is the first all-teen final since 1999 – when neither was born – which saw Serena Williams, 17, beat an 18-year-old Martina Hingis. Teen phenoms were relatively commonplace back then, especially on the women’s side, occasionally on the men’s.2021 September 11, Tim Lewis, “Focused, fearless, unflappable – the teenage stars taking sport by storm”, in The Observer, →ISSN
  2. One who is hip and fashionable.
    • Jones is a pop-culture phenom whose bold antics, outlandish personality, and dazzling looks defied all norms.2013, Ytasha L. Womack, Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture, →ISBN, page 105

Forms of phenom

pluralphenoms

Plural of phenom: phenoms

Origin of phenom

Clipping of phenomenon (“remarkable occurrence”). American English, c. 1890s.

Words that rhyme with phenom

Questions about phenom

What does phenom mean?
Phenom means someone or something that is phenomenal, especially a promising young player in sports like baseball, American football, basketball, tennis, and golf.
What part of speech is phenom?
Phenom is a noun.
How do you pronounce phenom?
Phenom is pronounced /ˈfiːnɒm/.
What is the plural of phenom?
The plural of phenom is phenoms.

Words near phenom in the dictionary

  1. phenolsulfonephthaleins
  2. phenolsulfonphthalein
  3. phenolsulfonphthaleins
  4. phenolsulphonphthalein
  5. phenolsulphonphthaleins
  6. phenom
  7. phenome
  8. phenomena
  9. phenomenae
  10. phenomenal
  11. phenomenal consciousness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: phenom (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.

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

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