heartache
noun
Simple meaning
Emotional distress or pain, often caused by a loved one or their absence.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
hahrtaykSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈhɑɹteɪk
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
Emotional distress or pain, often caused by a loved one or their absence.
Intense sorrow caused by loss of a loved one (especially by death)
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient (estimated)
- Frequency
- Uncommon
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
This meaning: Emotional distress or pain, often caused by a loved one or their absence.
Used this way, heartache is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly unfavourable pull. It sounds natural in ordinary conversation and in expressive writing alike.
- Emotional tone
- Negative
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Serious and weighty
- Usage feel
- Everyday but emotionally strong
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: emotional distress or pain
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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.