herbivore
noun
Simple meaning
Any animal that feeds chiefly on grass and other plants.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
hurbihvawrSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈhɝbɪvɔɹ
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 animal that feeds chiefly on grass and other plants
An organism that feeds chiefly on plants; an animal that feeds on herbage or vegetation as the main part of its diet.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B2 · Upper Intermediate (estimated)
- Frequency
- Rare
- Formality
- Technical
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
This meaning: Any animal that feeds chiefly on grass and other plants
Used this way, herbivore 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 herbivore
- “Horses are herbivores.”noun
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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.