lethal
adjective · noun
Simple meaning
Of, about, or causing death.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
leethuhlSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈliθəl
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.
adjective
Of, pertaining to, or causing death; deadly; mortal; fatal.
noun
Any weapon that causes death.
genetics
An allele that causes the death of the organism that carries it.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Of, pertaining to, or causing death; deadly; mortal; fatal.
Used this way, lethal is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly unfavourable pull. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Negative
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Serious and weighty
- 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.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
Any gene that has an effect that causes the death of the organism at any stage of life.
The size dose that will cause death.
An agent capable of causing death.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
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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.