affair
noun
Simple meaning
An adulterous relationship, chiefly of a married person..
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
uhfehrSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
əˈfɛɹ
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.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
An adulterous relationship, chiefly of a married person. (from affaire de cœur, affair of the heart).
A usually secretive or illicit sexual relationship
An otherwise illicit romantic relationship, such as with someone who is not one's regular partner (boyfriend, girlfriend).
A person with whom someone has an adulterous relationship.
A party or social gathering, especially of a formal nature.
Any proceeding or action which it is wished to refer to or characterize vaguely.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B1 · Intermediate (estimated)
- Frequency
- Moderately Common
- Typical Use
- General and technical use
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: An adulterous relationship, chiefly of a married person. (from affaire de cœur, affair of the heart).
Used this way, affair is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in relationships contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Relationships
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use affair
- “The party was quite an affair.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Similar Words, What’s the Difference?
Close in meaning, but not always interchangeable.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
Matters of personal concern.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
The United States federal department responsible for the interests of military veterans.
A gay festivity.
Affairs between nations.
A relationship between two lovers.
A person engaged in commercial or industrial business (especially an owner or executive).
A master's degree in questions of public concern.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
- mistressnoun
- husbandnoun
- wifenoun
- relationshipnoun
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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.