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intensity

noun

Simple meaning

High level or degree.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

ihntehnsuhtee

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IPA pronunciation (US)

ɪnˈtɛnsəti

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.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. The quality of being intense.

  2. High level or degree; the property of being intense

  3. physics

    Time-averaged energy flux (the ratio of average power to the area through which the power "flows"); irradiance.

  4. The degree of strength.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
B1 · Intermediate
Frequency
Common
Typical Use
Everyday English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: The quality of being intense.

Used this way, intensity 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
Moderate
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 intensity

  • “He adjusted the intensity of the sound.”noun

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

field intensitycapital intensityintensity levelsignal intensityhigh intensitylow intensitystress intensitymaximum intensity

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Word family

Words built from the same root.

  • intensiveadjectiveDerived adjective

    Tending to give force or emphasis.

  • intenselyadverbDerived adverb

    To a high degree.

  • intensivelyadverbDerived adverb

    In an intensive manner.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • intensity levelnounCompound term

    The amount of energy transmitted (as by acoustic or electromagnetic radiation).

  • field intensitynounCompound term

    The vector sum of all the forces exerted by an electrical or magnetic field (on a unit mass or unit charge or unit magnetic pole) at a given point in the field.

  • half-intensitynounCompound term

    Half the maximum intensity.

  • light intensitynounCompound term

    Luminous intensity measured in candelas.

  • luminous intensity unitnounCompound term

    A measure of luminous intensity.

  • change intensityverbCompound term

    Increase or decrease in intensity.

Related words

Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.

  • intensifyverbRelated term

    Increase in extent or intensity.

  • intensifyingadjectiveRelated term

    Increasing in strength or intensity.

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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.