distant
adjective
Simple meaning
Far apart in relevance or relationship or kinship.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
distuhntSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈdɪstənt
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.
adjective
Far apart in relevance or relationship or kinship
Far off (physically, logically or mentally).
Emotionally unresponsive or unwilling to express genuine feelings.
televisionnot comparable
Imported into a cable television system from a different market (and thus possibly incurring a copyright royalty).
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B1 · Intermediate (estimated)
- Frequency
- Moderately Common
- Typical Use
- Neutral / general English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Far apart in relevance or relationship or kinship
Used this way, distant is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in relationships contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- No strong connotation
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Relationships
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use distant
- “We could hear the faint sound of music from a distant house.”
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Common Patterns and Combinations
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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.