harry
verb · noun
Simple meaning
To harass, bother or distress with demands, threats.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
hehreeSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈhɛɹi
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 harass, bother or distress with demands, threats, or criticism.
To make repeated attacks on an enemy.
To strip, lay waste, ravage.
To plunder, pillage, assault.
noun
A diminutive of the male given name Henry, Harold.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A2 · Elementary
- Frequency
- Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: To make repeated attacks on an enemy.
Used this way, harry is a reasonably familiar word with a faintly unfavourable edge. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Slightly negative
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Critical or judgemental
- 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 harry
- “He is known to harry his staff when he is overworked.”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.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
A persistent attacker.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
United States physician who first described the XXY-syndrome (born in 1912).
Any of numerous large Old World hawks intermediate in some respects between typical hawks and typical eagles.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
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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.