capillary
adjective · noun
Simple meaning
Of or about hair.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
kapuhluhreeSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈkæpəlɛɹi
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.
adjective
Of or relating to hair
Of or relating to capillaries in the body or to capillary action.
Of, relating to, or caused by surface tension.
Of or pertaining to a narrow tube.
Resembling or pertaining to hair, especially in slenderness or fineness.
noun
physicschemistry
A tube of small internal diameter; holds liquid by capillary action
“The technician used a glass capillary to collect a tiny blood sample.”
anatomy
Any of the minute blood vessels connecting arterioles with venules
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C1 · Advanced (estimated)
- Frequency
- Uncommon
- Formality
- Technical
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Of or relating to hair
Used this way, capillary 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
- No strong connotation
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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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.
One of the small thin-walled arteries that end in capillaries.
A layer of tissue densely packed with capillaries.
A fracture without separation of the fragments and the line of the break being very thin.
A tube of small internal diameter.
A tube of small internal diameter.
A minute vein continuous with a capillary.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: tube of small internal diameter
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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.