earned
adjective
Simple meaning
Not paid for.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
urndIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈɝnd
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
marketing
Not paid for; appearing in media on its own merits.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B1 · Intermediate
- Frequency
- Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: (marketing) Not paid for; appearing in media on its own merits.
Used this way, earned is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in business or professional 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
- Business/professional
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use earned
- “A well-earned reputation for honesty.”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.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
Earn on some commercial or business transaction.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
Someone who earn wages in return for their labor.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A run that was not scored as the result of an error by the other team.
A measure of a pitcher's effectiveness.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Antonyms
Sense: not paid for
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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.