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liability

noun

Simple meaning

An obligation, debt or responsibility owed to someone.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

lyuhbilihtee

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US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

laɪəˈbɪlɪti

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. An obligation, debt or responsibility owed to someone.

  2. The quality of being something that holds you back

  3. A handicap that holds something back, a drawback, someone or something that is a burden to whoever is required to take care of them; a person or action that exposes others to greater risk.

  4. The condition of being susceptible to something.

  5. accounting

    Any item recorded on the right-hand side of a balance sheet.

  6. The likelihood of something happening.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
A1 · Beginner (estimated)
Frequency
Common
Typical Use
General English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: An obligation, debt or responsibility owed to someone.

Used this way, liability is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in ethics or values contexts.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
Matter-of-fact
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Where it naturally appears

  • Ethics/values

Nearby words

  • financial obligation , rarer, so it draws attention

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.

limited liabilitytax liabilitystrict liabilityliability insuranceproduct liabilitylegal liabilityliability companypersonal liability

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Inflected forms

Grammatical variations of the same word.

  • liabilitiesnounPlural form

    Anything that is owed to someone else.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • liability insurancenounCompound term

    Insurance that provides protection from claims arising from injuries or damage to other people or property.

  • limited liabilitynounCompound term

    The liability of a firm's owners for no more than the capital they have invested in the firm.

  • tax liabilitynounCompound term

    The amount of tax owed.

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

Sense: obligation or debt or responsibility owed to someone

indebtedness

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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.