light bulb
noun
Simple meaning
Electric lamp made up of a transparent or translucent glass housing containing a wire filament that emits light when heated by electricity.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
lytbuhlbSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈlaɪtˈbʌlb
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
Electric lamp consisting of a transparent or translucent glass housing containing a wire filament (usually tungsten) that emits light when heated by electricity
An evacuated glass bulb containing a metal filament which is heated by electrical resistance to produce light.
by extension
An article that resembles such a bulb and converts electricity to light by any process.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
This meaning: Electric lamp consisting of a transparent or translucent glass housing containing a wire filament (usually tungsten) that emits light when heated by electricity
Used this way, light bulb 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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Words can change meaning depending on context.
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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.