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encouraging

adjective · noun

Simple meaning

Giving courage, confidence or hope.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

ehnkurihjing

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US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ɛnˈkɝɪdʒɪŋ

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.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

adjective

  1. Giving courage, confidence or hope; auspicious.

  2. Supporting by giving encouragement: positively.

noun

  1. Encouragement

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
B1 · Intermediate (estimated)
Frequency
Common
Typical Use
Everyday English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: Giving courage, confidence or hope; auspicious.

Used this way, encouraging 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

Nearby words

  • inspiriting , rarer, so it draws attention

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

More ways to use encouraging

  • “Encouraging advances in medical research.”adjective

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

encouraging words

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Inflected forms

Grammatical variations of the same word.

  • encourageverbBase word

    Contribute to the progress or growth of.

Word family

Words built from the same root.

  • encouragementnounDerived noun

    The expression of approval and support.

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

adjective

Sense: giving courage or confidence or hope

supportingsupportive

noun

Sense: encouragement

hortatory

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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.