affection
noun
Simple meaning
A feeling of love or strong attachment.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
uhfehkshuhnSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
əˈfɛkʃən
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
The state of being affected, especially: a change in, or alteration of, the emotional state of a person or other animal, caused by a subjective affect (a subjective feeling or emotion), which arises in response to a stimulus which may result from either thought or perception.
An emotion; a feeling or natural impulse acting upon and swaying the mind.
A feeling of love or strong attachment.
The act of affecting or acting upon.
An attribute; a quality or property; a condition.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B2 · Upper Intermediate
- Frequency
- Moderately Common
- Typical Use
- Neutral / general English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: The state of being affected, especially: a change in, or alteration of, the emotional state of a person or other animal, caused by a subjective affect (a subjective feeling or emotion), which arises in response to a stimulus which may result from either thought or perception.
Used this way, affection is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Nearby words
- heart , a specialist term, precise but narrower
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use affection
- “He had trouble expressing the affection he felt.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A tort based on willful and malicious interference with the marriage relation by a third party without justification or excuse.
Sympathy of each person for the other.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
With affection.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
- desirenoun
- feelingnoun
- gratitudenoun
- attachmentnoun
- devotionnoun
- admirationnoun
- feelingsnoun
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: being affected or especially
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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.