hail
noun · verb
Simple meaning
Balls or pieces of ice falling as precipitation, often in connection with a thunderstorm.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
haylIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈheɪl
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
meteorologyuncountable
Balls or pieces of ice falling as precipitation, often in connection with a thunderstorm.
meteorologycountable
An occurrence of this type of precipitation; a hailstorm.
countableby extension
A rapid, intense barrage by a large number of projectiles or other objects.
verb
Greet enthusiastically or joyfully
transitive
To greet; give salutation to; salute.
transitive
To call out loudly in order to gain the attention of.
transitive
To signal in order to initiate communication with.
To pour down in rapid succession.
transitive
In the game of uppies and downies, to throw (the ball) repeatedly up and down at the goal location, in order to score a point.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B2 · Upper Intermediate
- Frequency
- Moderately Common
- Typical Use
- Neutral / general English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: (meteorology, uncountable) Balls or pieces of ice falling as precipitation, often in connection with a thunderstorm.
Used this way, hail 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
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use hail
- “The critics hailed the young pianist as a new Rubinstein.”verb
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A salutation to the Virgin Mary now used in prayers to her.
A portable loudspeaker with built-in microphone and amplifier.
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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.