impair
verb
Simple meaning
To weaken; to affect negatively.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
ihmpehrSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ɪmˈpɛɹ
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
transitive
To weaken; to affect negatively; to have a diminishing effect on.
Make worse or less effective
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C1 · Advanced
- Frequency
- Uncommon
- Typical Use
- Primarily written
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Make worse or less effective
Used this way, impair 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
- No strong connotation
- 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 impair
- “His vision was impaired.”verb
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
Diminished in strength, quality, or utility.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
The occurrence of a change for the worse.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
Someone who has inferior vision.
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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.