confront
verb
Simple meaning
To stand or meet facing.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
kuhnfruhntSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
kənfˈɹʌnt
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.
verb
transitive
To stand or meet facing, especially in competition, hostility or defiance; to come face to face with.
“The child screamed when he confronted the man in the Halloween costume.”
Oppose, as in hostility or a competition
transitive
To bring someone face to face with something.
Deal with (something unpleasant) head on
transitive
To come up against; to encounter.
transitive
To put a thing facing to; to set in contrast to.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C1 · Advanced
- Frequency
- Moderately Common
- Typical Use
- Neutral / general English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: To stand or meet facing, especially in competition, hostility or defiance; to come face to face with.
Used this way, confront is a common word with a clearly unfavourable pull. It comes across as direct, sometimes bluntly so.
“The child screamed when he confronted the man in the Halloween costume.”
- Emotional tone
- Negative
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Gentle
- How common
- Common
- Connotation
- Serious and weighty
- Usage feel
- Blunt and forceful
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use confront
- “The child screamed when he confronted the man in the Halloween costume.”verb
- “We confronted him with the evidence.”verb
- “You must confront your opponent.”verb
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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.
A right guaranteed by the 6th amendment to the US Constitution.
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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.