intersection
noun
Simple meaning
The junction of two paths, streets, highways, or other thoroughfares.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
intersehkshuhnSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈɪntəɹˌsɛkʃən
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 junction of two (or more) paths, streets, highways, or other thoroughfares.
Any overlap, confluence, or crossover.
geometry
The point or set of points common to two geometrical objects (such as the point where two lines meet or the line where two planes intersect).
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B1 · Intermediate (estimated)
- Frequency
- Moderately Common
- Typical Use
- General and technical use
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: The junction of two (or more) paths, streets, highways, or other thoroughfares.
Used this way, intersection 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 intersection
- “The set of red hats is the intersection of the set of hats and the set of red things.”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.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A point where lines intersect.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
- boulevardnoun
- interchangenoun
- roundaboutnoun
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API (CC BY-SA 3.0). Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.