impersonate
verb
Simple meaning
Pretend to be someone you are not.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
ihmpursuhnaytSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ɪmˈpɝsəneɪt
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
Pretend to be someone you are not; sometimes with fraudulent intentions
transitive
To pretend to be (a different person); to assume the identity of, especially when there is an intent to deceive.
transitivecomputing
To operate with the permissions of a different user account.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient
- Frequency
- Rare
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Pretend to be someone you are not; sometimes with fraudulent intentions
Used this way, impersonate is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly unfavourable pull. It criticises, but without shouting.
- Emotional tone
- Negative
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Gentle
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Serious and weighty
- Usage feel
- Critical but measured
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use impersonate
- “She impersonates Madonna.”verb
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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.