debrief
verb
Simple meaning
To question someone, or a group of people, after the implementation of a project, to learn from mistakes.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
dihbreefSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
dɪbˈɹif
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 question someone, or a group of people, after the implementation of a project, in order to learn from mistakes, etc.
transitive
To question someone after a military mission in order to obtain information (especially intelligence).
transitive
To inform subjects of an experiment about what has happened in a complete and accurate manner.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient (estimated)
- Frequency
- Rare
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: To question someone, or a group of people, after the implementation of a project, in order to learn from mistakes, etc.
Used this way, debrief 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 debrief
- “The released hostages were debriefed.”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.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
Report of a mission or task.
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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.