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wpm

American  
  1. words per minute.


wpm British  

abbreviation

  1. words per minute

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Example Sentences

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Pen-and-ink clerks who struggled to top 20 words a minute were displaced by typists who could top 60 wpm, especially if they used new touch-typing techniques pioneered by a Cincinnati stenographer, Elizabeth Longley.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 15, 2025

Foulke suspected that beyond 300 wpm, deeper processes in the brain were getting overloaded.

From Washington Post ● Jun. 22, 2016

In Foulke’s experiments, speech could be accelerated to 250-275 wpm without affecting people’s scores on a listening comprehension test.

From Washington Post ● Jun. 22, 2016

Foulke and his colleagues noticed that college students preferred recordings that had been sped up by 30 percent, from 175 wpm to 222 wpm.

From Washington Post ● Jun. 22, 2016

Franz recovered after a brisk shake and circled Angie, his tail registering 200 wpm.

From "The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street" by Karina Yan Glaser

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