discernment
noun
Simple meaning
The mental ability to understand and discriminate between relations.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
dihsurnmuhntSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
dɪˈsɝnmənt
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 mental ability to understand and discriminate between relations
The ability to distinguish; judgement.
The ability to distinguish between things.
The act of distinguishing between things.
The ability to perceive differences that exist.
The ability to make wise judgements; sagacity.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient (estimated)
- Frequency
- Uncommon
- Formality
- Technical
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: The mental ability to understand and discriminate between relations
Used this way, discernment 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.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
Perceptible by the senses or intellect.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: mental ability to understand and discriminate between relations
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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.