marbles
noun
Form of marble , plural of marble.
Simple meaning
Any of several children's games played with small balls.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
mahrbuhlzSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈmɑɹbəlz
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
figurativeusually in a limited number of expressions
Sanity.
Any of several children's games played with small balls (made of marble or more commonly glass).
A children's game played with little balls made of a hard substance (as glass)
motor racing
Bits of rolled-up rubber shed by the tires of race cars that accumulate at the edges of the track, especially at the corners.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Any of several children's games played with small balls (made of marble or more commonly glass).
Used this way, marbles is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It stays understated rather than dramatic. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Mild
- 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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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.