babysit
verb
Simple meaning
To watch or tend someone else's child for a period of time, often for money.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
baybeesitSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈbeɪbisɪt
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
ambitransitive
To watch or tend someone else's child for a period of time, often for money.
transitiveinformal
To watch or tend a thing or process without normally intervening in it, e.g. as a precaution should an emergency happen.
transitiveinformal
To watch or attend anything or anyone more closely than ought to be needed; to have to help or coax too much.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient (estimated)
- Frequency
- Rare
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: (ambitransitive) To watch or tend someone else's child for a period of time, often for money.
Used this way, babysit is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in family or home contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- No strong connotation
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Family/home
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
The work of a baby sitter.
A person engaged to care for children when the parents are not home.
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What Does It Mean Here?
Words can change meaning depending on context.
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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.