identity
noun
Simple meaning
The difference or character that marks off a person or collective from the rest of the same kind.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
eyedehntuhteeSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
aɪˈdɛntəti
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
The difference or character that marks off an individual or collective from the rest of the same kind; selfhood; the sense of who something or someone or oneself is, or the recurring characteristics that enable the recognition of such an individual or group by others or themselves.
Sameness, identicalness; the quality or fact of (several specified things) being the same.
Exact sameness
“They shared an identity of interests.”
A name or persona—a mask or appearance one presents to the world—by which one is known.
AustraliaNew Zealand
The individual characteristics by which a thing or person is recognized or known
“Geneticists only recently discovered the identity of the gene that causes it.”
AustraliaNew Zealand
A well-known or famous person.
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: The difference or character that marks off an individual or collective from the rest of the same kind; selfhood; the sense of who something or someone or oneself is, or the recurring characteristics that enable the recognition of such an individual or group by others or themselves.
Used this way, identity 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 identity
- “You can lose your identity when you join the army.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
Derived from a single egg or ovum.
With complete identity.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
An operator that leaves unchanged the element on which it operates.
A scalar matrix in which all of the diagonal elements are unity.
An operator that leaves unchanged the element on which it operates.
A line of persons arranged by police for inspection or identification.
The co-option of another person's personal information (e.g., name, Social Security number, credit card number, passport) without that person's knowledge and the fraudulent use of such…
The automatic identification of living individuals by using their physiological and behavioral characteristics.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
Recognize as being.
A symbol that establishes the identity of the one bearing it.
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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.