dominant
adjective · noun
Simple meaning
Predominant, common, prevalent, of greatest importance.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
dahmuhnuhntSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈdɑmənənt
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
Predominant, common, prevalent, of greatest importance.
Ruling; governing; prevailing
of a body part
Preferred and used with greater dexterity than the other, as the right hand of a right-handed person or the left hand of a left-handed one.
noun
A species or organism that is dominant.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B2 · Upper Intermediate
- Frequency
- Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Predominant, common, prevalent, of greatest importance.
Used this way, dominant is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It suits considered writing and prepared speech.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Serious and weighty
- Usage feel
- Formal and precise
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use dominant
- “Television plays a dominant role in molding public opinion.”adjective
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
An allele that produces the same phenotype whether its paired allele is identical or different.
Gene that produces the same phenotype in the organism whether or not its allele identical.
A disease caused by a dominant mutant gene on an autosome.
Hereditary pattern in which a dominant gene on the X chromosome causes a characteristic to be manifested in the offspring.
A disease caused by a dominant mutant gene on an autosome.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: species or organism that is dominant
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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.