Word.ws English Dictionary

sulphur

sulphur is the alternative spelling of sulfur.

Meaning of sulfur

Noun

sulfur (usually uncountable, plural sulfurs)

  1. (usually) A chemical element with atomic number 16, having a bright yellow color and characteristic smell, used commercially in a variety of products such as insecticides, black powder, and matchsticks.
    • A Dungeon horrible, on all ſides round / As one great Furnace flam’d, yet from thoſe flames / No light, but rather darkneſs viſible / […] but torture without end / Still urges, and a fiery Deluge, fed / With ever-burning Sulphur unconſum’d:1667, John Milton, “Book I”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC
    1. (usually) The element symbolically associated with hellfire or damnation, or in alchemy, the fiery principle present in all things.
      • “She shall be blasted like a riven oak! Drowned in sulphur! Torn by whirlwinds!”1970, Richard Carpenter, Catweazle, Harmondsworth: Puffin Books, page 68
  2. (countable, uncountable, usually) A yellowish green colour, like that of sulfur.
  3. (usually) Any of various pierid butterflies of the subfamily Coliadinae, especially the sulfur-coloured species.

See all 7 meanings of sulfur

Proper noun capitalized: Sulphur

Sulphur

  1. A city, the county seat of Murray County, Oklahoma, United States.

Forms of sulphur

Noun
pluralsulphurs
Verb
third-person singular presentsulphurs
present participlesulphuring
past participlesulphured
pastsulphured

Origin of sulphur

From sulphur.

Words formed from sulphur

Phrases with sulphur

45 more phrasesFewer phrases

Questions about sulphur

What does sulphur mean?
Sulphur means a city, the county seat of Murray County, Oklahoma, United States.
What is sulphur the alternative spelling of?
Sulphur is the alternative spelling of sulfur.
What part of speech is sulphur?
Sulphur is a proper noun.

Words near sulphur in the dictionary

  1. sulphoximides
  2. sulphoximine
  3. sulphoximines
  4. sulphoxylate
  5. sulphoxylates
  6. sulphur
  7. sulphur acid
  8. sulphur alcohol
  9. sulphur bacterium
  10. sulphur bath
  11. sulphur baths

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sulphur (page history and authors); Sulphur (page history and authors); sulfur (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: “sulphur.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sulphur. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.