caries
noun
Form of cary , plural of cary.
Simple meaning
A disease of the teeth resulting in damage to tooth structure.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
kehreezIPA pronunciation (US)
kɛɹiz
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
usually
A disease of the teeth resulting in damage to tooth structure.
The progressive destruction of bone or tooth by decay.
Word at a Glance
- Frequency
- Uncommon
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A disease of the teeth resulting in damage to tooth structure.
Used this way, caries is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly unfavourable pull. It turns up most in medicine or healthcare contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Negative
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Serious and weighty
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Medicine/healthcare
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.
Disease
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
Soft decayed area in a tooth.
Fungus that destroys kernels of wheat by replacing them with greasy masses of smelly spores.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
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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.