encourage
verb
Simple meaning
To give someone support and confidence to do something.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
ehnkurijSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ɛnˈkɝɪdʒ
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.
verb
To spur on, strongly recommend.
“His financial success encouraged him to look for a wife.”
To mentally support; to motivate, give courage, hope or spirit.
To foster, give help or patronage.
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: To mentally support; to motivate, give courage, hope or spirit.
Used this way, encourage is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly warm, approving pull. It carries warmth, so it reads as personal rather than detached.
- Emotional tone
- Positive
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Brave and principled
- Usage feel
- Warm and expressive
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
Giving courage or confidence or hope.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
The expression of approval and support.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: to spur on or strongly recommend
Antonyms
Sense: to spur on or strongly recommend
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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.