effort
noun
Simple meaning
The work involved in performing an activity.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
ehfertSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈɛfɚt
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 work involved in performing an activity; exertion.
A force acting on a body in the direction of its motion.
An endeavor.
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 work involved in performing an activity; exertion.
Used this way, effort 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
Nearby words
- elbow grease , rarer, so it draws attention
- travail , more formal, and heavier in everyday conversation
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use effort
- “Made an effort to cover all the reading material.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
Requiring or apparently requiring no effort.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A campaign to raise money for some cause.
The least effortful way to do something.
A useless effort.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
Without effort or apparent effort.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: work involved in performing an activity
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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.