diet
noun · verb · adjective
Simple meaning
The food and beverage a person or animal consumes.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
dyuhtSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈdaɪət
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
The food and beverage a person or animal consumes.
usually capitalized as a proper noun
A council or assembly of leaders; a formal deliberative assembly.
countable
A controlled regimen of food and drink choices, as to gain or lose weight or otherwise influence health.
by extension
Any habitual intake or consumption.
Alternative letter-case form of diet ("formal deliberative assembly").
verb
intransitive
To modify one's food and beverage intake so as to decrease or increase body weight or influence health.
adjective
of a food or beverage
Containing less fat, salt, sugar, or calories than normal, or claimed to have such.
informalfigurative
Having certain traits subtracted.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A2 · Elementary
- Frequency
- Very Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: The food and beverage a person or animal consumes.
Used this way, diet 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.
More ways to use diet
- “He has high blood pressure and must stick to a low-salt diet.”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.
The act of restricting your food intake (or your intake of particular foods).
A person who diets.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
Related to a prescribed selection of foods.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A reducing diet that enjoys temporary popularity.
Diet prescribed to treat celiac disease.
A diet high in plant and animal proteins.
A diet designed to patients with vitamin deficiencies.
Diet prescribed for bedridden or convalescent people.
A diet of foods that can be served in liquid or strained form (plus custards or puddings).
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
A specialist in the study of diet and nutrition.
Of or relating to the diet.
Something added to complete a diet or to make up for a dietary deficiency.
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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.