espouse
verb
Simple meaning
Take up the cause, ideology, practice, method, of someone and use it as one's own.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
ihspowzSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ɪsˈpaʊz
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
Take up the cause, ideology, practice, method, of someone and use it as one's own
transitivefigurativemodern usage
To accept, support, or take on as one's own (an idea or a cause).
Take in marriage
transitive
To marry.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient (estimated)
- Frequency
- Rare
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Take up the cause, ideology, practice, method, of someone and use it as one's own
Used this way, espouse 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
- No strong connotation
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Common Patterns and Combinations
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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.