lighthouse
noun
Simple meaning
A tower or other structure exhibiting a light or lights to warn or guide sailors.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
lythowsSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈlaɪthaʊs
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
A tower or other structure exhibiting a light or lights to warn or guide sailors.
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.
This meaning: A tower or other structure exhibiting a light or lights to warn or guide sailors.
Used this way, lighthouse 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
Nearby words
- beacon light , rarer, so it draws attention
- beacon , a specialist term, precise but narrower
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use lighthouse
- “The old lighthouse stood tall, guiding ships through the night.”
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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.
The keeper of a lighthouse.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: tower or other structure exhibiting a light
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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.