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brotherhood

noun

Simple meaning

An association of people for any purpose, such as a society of monks.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

bruhtherhuud

Say the bold part a little louder.

US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈbɹʌðɚhʊd

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.

noun

  1. An association of people for any purpose, such as a society of monks; a fraternity.

  2. People engaged in a particular occupation

  3. All the people engaged in the same business, especially those of the same profession

  4. The state of being brothers or a brother (also figuratively).

  5. People, or (poetically) things, of the same kind.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
B2 · Upper Intermediate (estimated)
Frequency
Moderately Common
Formality
Technical

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: An association of people for any purpose, such as a society of monks; a fraternity.

Used this way, brotherhood 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

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

More ways to use brotherhood

  • “There was a strong sense of brotherhood among the team members.”noun

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

muslim brotherhoodblood brotherhooduniversal brotherhoodinternational brotherhoodhuman brotherhoodchristian brotherhoodunited brotherhoodrepublican brotherhood

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

Sense: association of people for any purpose

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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.