grebe
noun
Simple meaning
A type of water bird that dives for food.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
greebIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈɡɹib
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
Any of several waterbirds in the family Podicipedidae of the order Podicipediformes. They have strong, sharp bills, and lobate toes.
Small compact-bodied almost completely aquatic bird that builds floating nests; similar to loons but smaller and with lobate rather than webbed feet
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Any of several waterbirds in the family Podicipedidae of the order Podicipediformes. They have strong, sharp bills, and lobate toes.
Used this way, grebe is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in family or home contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Family/home
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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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.