crusade
noun · verb
Simple meaning
A grand, concerted effort towards some purportedly worthy cause.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
kroosaydSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
kɹuˈseɪd
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
figurativelysometimes ironically
A grand, concerted effort towards some purportedly worthy cause.
Any war instigated and blessed by the Church for alleged religious ends, (especially) papal-sanctioned military campaigns against infidels or heretics.
Any of a series of religious campaigns by Christian forces from the 11th to the 13th century, mostly to capture the Holy Land from the Muslims who occupied it.
verb
Exert oneself continuously, vigorously, or obtrusively to gain an end or engage in a crusade for a certain cause or person; be an advocate for
intransitive
To make a grand concerted effort toward some purportedly worthy cause.
Go on a crusade; fight a holy war
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: (figuratively, sometimes ironically) A grand, concerted effort towards some purportedly worthy cause.
Used this way, crusade 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.
A disputant who advocates reform.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A Crusade under papal control from 1218 to 1221 that achieved military victories but failed when dissension arose over accepting the terms they had been offered.
A Crusade from 1096 to 1099.
A Crusade from 1202 to 1204 that was diverted into a battle for Constantinople and failed to recapture Jerusalem.
A Crusade from 1145 to 1147 that failed because of internal disagreements among the crusaders and led to the loss of Jerusalem in 1187.
A Crusade initiated in 1248 after the loss of Jerusalem in 1244 and defeated in 1249.
A Crusade from 1228 to 1229 led by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II who fell ill and was excommunicated by the Pope.
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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.