alienate
verb
Simple meaning
To estrange; to withdraw affections or attention from.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
aylyuhnaytSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈeɪljəneɪt
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.
verb
To estrange; to withdraw affections or attention from; to make indifferent or averse, where love or friendship before subsisted.
To cause one to feel unable to relate.
To convey or transfer to another, as title, property, or right; to part voluntarily with ownership of.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient
- Frequency
- Rare
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: To estrange; to withdraw affections or attention from; to make indifferent or averse, where love or friendship before subsisted.
Used this way, alienate is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly warm, approving pull. It turns up most in relationships contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Positive
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Affectionate
- 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 alienate
- “The boring work alienated his employees.”verb
- “She alienated her friends when she became fanatically religious.”verb
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
The feeling of being alienated from other people.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: to estrange
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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.