inhibition
noun
Simple meaning
A personal feeling of fear or embarrassment that stops one behaving naturally.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
ihnhuhbishuhnSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ɪnhəˈbɪʃən
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 action of prohibiting or inhibiting or forbidding (or an instance thereof)
psychology
A personal feeling of fear or embarrassment that stops one behaving naturally.
The act of inhibiting.
chemistrybiochemistry
The process of stopping or retarding a reaction.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B2 · Upper Intermediate
- Frequency
- Moderately Common
- Typical Use
- Neutral / general English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: The action of prohibiting or inhibiting or forbidding (or an instance thereof)
Used this way, inhibition 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 inhibition
- “The inhibition of the heart by the vagus nerve.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Stopping
Other combinations
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A method of behavior therapy based on the inhibition of one response by the occurrence of another response that is mutually incompatible with it.
A method of behavior therapy based on the inhibition of one response by the occurrence of another response that is mutually incompatible with 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.