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marking

noun

Simple meaning

The characteristic colouration and patterning of an animal.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

mahrking

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US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈmɑɹkɪŋ

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. The characteristic colouration and patterning of an animal.

  2. The act of making a visible mark on a surface

  3. The action of marking.

  4. A symbol or set of letters used to identify the type or identity of an object.

  5. A distinguishing symbol

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
B2 · Upper Intermediate
Frequency
Moderately Common
Typical Use
Neutral / general English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: The characteristic colouration and patterning of an animal.

Used this way, marking 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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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

marking pencase markingmarking systemline markinginitial markingscent marking

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Inflected forms

Grammatical variations of the same word.

  • markverbBase word

    Attach a tag or label to.

Word family

Words built from the same root.

  • markernounPerson or profession · specialist

    Some conspicuous object used to distinguish or mark something.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • marking inknounCompound term

    An indelible ink for marking clothes or linens etc.

  • metronome markingnounCompound term

    The pace of music measured by the number of beats occurring in 60 seconds.

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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.