Word.ws English Dictionary

subitization

subitization noun: the process of, or act of, glancing at a group of a few objects and knowing how many there are without actually counting.

Noun

subitization (uncountable)

  1. The process of, or act of, glancing at a group of a few objects and knowing how many there are without actually counting.
    • Monkeys and other animals can compute the exact number of a small set of objects at a glance without explicitly counting. The ability is called subitization.2008 April 22, Christine Kenneally, “When Language Can Hold the Answer”, in The New York Times

Origin of subitization

From subitize + -ation.

Questions about subitization

What does subitization mean?
Subitization means the process of, or act of, glancing at a group of a few objects and knowing how many there are without actually counting.
What part of speech is subitization?
Subitization is a noun.

Words near subitization in the dictionary

  1. subitises
  2. subitising
  3. subitive
  4. subitives
  5. subitizable
  6. subitization
  7. subitize
  8. subitized
  9. subitizer
  10. subitizers
  11. subitizes

Source and license

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