civilians
noun
Form of civilian , plural of civilian.
Simple meaning
Someone who does not belong to a particular group or engage in a particular activity.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
suhvilyuhnzSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
səˈvɪljənz
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
plural of civilian
A person following the pursuits of civil life, especially one who is not an active member of the armed forces.
plural of civilian
A person who does not belong to a particular group or engage in a particular activity, an outsider.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A person following the pursuits of civil life, especially one who is not an active member of the armed forces.
Used this way, civilians 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.
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
Associated with civil life or performed by persons who are not active members of the military.
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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.