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irritability

noun

Simple meaning

A natural susceptibility, characteristic of all living organisms, tissues, and cells, to the influence of certain stimuli, response being manifested in a variety of ways.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

ihrihtuhbiluhtee

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IPA pronunciation (US)

ɪɹɪtəˈbɪləti

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 state or quality of being irritable; quick excitability.

  2. physiology

    A natural susceptibility, characteristic of all living organisms, tissues, and cells, to the influence of certain stimuli, response being manifested in a variety of ways.

  3. medicine

    Excessive sensitivity of an organ or body part

  4. medicine

    A condition of morbid excitability of an organ or part of the body; undue susceptibility to the influence of stimuli.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
C2 · Proficient
Frequency
Uncommon

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: The state or quality of being irritable; quick excitability.

Used this way, irritability 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.

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

nervous irritabilityincreased irritabilitygreat irritabilityextreme irritabilityreflex irritabilitymuscular irritability

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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.