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casual

adjective · noun

Simple meaning

Coming without regularity.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

kazhuhwuhl

Say the bold part a little louder.

US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈkæʒəwəl

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.

adjective

  1. Coming without regularity; occasional or incidental.

  2. of behaviorusageor milieu

    Informal; relaxed.

  3. of clothing or utensils

    Designed for informal or everyday use.

  4. Happening or coming to pass without design.

  5. Happening by chance.

  6. Employed irregularly.

noun

  1. A worker who is doing a particular type of job temporarily, not as a lifetime career.

  2. BritishAustraliaNew Zealand

    A worker who is only working for a company occasionally, not as its permanent employee.

  3. in the plural

    Shoes suitable for everyday use, as opposed to more formal footwear.

  4. A soldier temporarily at a place of duty, usually en route to another place of duty.

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: Coming without regularity; occasional or incidental.

Used this way, casual 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.

More ways to use casual

  • “They only had casual meetings.”adjective
  • “The purchase of donuts was just a casual expense.”adjective
  • “He was just a casual worker.”adjective

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

Coming / happening

casual manner

Worker

casual labour

Other combinations

casual sexcasual observercasual conversationcasual readercasual observationcasual visitor

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Word family

Words built from the same root.

  • casuallyadverbDerived adverb

    Not methodically or according to plan.

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

Sense: coming without regularity

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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.