absolute

adjective · noun

Simple meaning

Complete and total.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

absuhloot

Say the bold part a little louder.

US device voice

IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈæbsəlut

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

adjective

Free of restrictions, limitations, qualifications or conditions; unconditional.
Unrestricted by laws, a constitution, or parliamentary or judicial or other checks; (legally) unlimited in power, especially if despotic.
Free from imperfection, perfect, complete; especially, perfectly embodying a quality in its essential characteristics or to its highest degree.
Characteristic of an absolutist ruler: domineering, peremptory.
Perfect or complete or pure
Pure, free from mixture or adulteration; unmixed.

noun

That which exists (or has a certain property, nature, size, etc) independent of references to other standards or external conditions; that which is universally valid; that which is not relative, conditional, qualified or mitigated.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty: B1 · Intermediate
Frequency: Common
Typical Use: Everyday English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: Free of restrictions, limitations, qualifications or conditions; unconditional.

'Absolute' means complete, total, or without doubt. It's stronger and more emphatic than 'complete' and can apply to concepts (absolute power) or feelings (absolute joy).

Emotional tone: Neutral
Formality: Neutral
Intensity: Not strongly marked
How common: Moderately common
Connotation: No strong connotation
Usage feel: Neutral and straightforward

Where you'll really hear it

Formal declarations
“The monarch held absolute power over the kingdom.”
Everyday conversation
“That's an absolute mess; we need to clean it up.”
Scientific measurement
“The temperature dropped to absolute zero in the experiment.”

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

More ways to use absolute

“No mortal being can influence the absolute.”noun

Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

Relating / syntactically

absolute temperatureabsolute zeroabsolute majority

Other combinations

absolute valueabsolute termsabsolute rightabsolute alcoholabsolute monarchy

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Word family

Words built from the same root.

absolutelyadverbDerived adverb
Completely and without qualification.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

absolute pitchnounCompound term
The ability to identify the pitch of a tone.
absolute scalenounCompound term
A temperature scale that defines absolute zero as 0 degrees.
absolute spacenounCompound term
Physical space independent of what occupies it.
absolute temperaturenounCompound term
Temperature measured on the absolute scale.
absolute thresholdnounCompound term
The lowest level of stimulation that a person can detect.
absolute valuenounCompound term
A real number regardless of its sign.

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

Sense: that which exists (or has a certain property

rankunconditional

Antonyms

Sense: that which exists (or has a certain property

relative

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.