masses
noun
Form of mass , plural of mass.
Simple meaning
The common people generally.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
masuhzSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈmæsəz
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
generically
People, especially a large number of people; the general population.
generically
The common people generally
“Separate the warriors from the mass.”
The lower classes or all but the elite.
The total population.
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.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: (generically) People, especially a large number of people; the general population.
Used this way, masses 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
- hoi polloi , 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.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
The property of a body that causes it to have weight in a gravitational field.
A shot in billiards made by hitting the cue ball with the cue held nearly vertically.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
To a massive degree or in a massive manner.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
The use of spectroscopy to determine the masses of small electrically charged particles.
The principle that the cortex of the brain operates as a coordinated system with large masses of neural tissue involved in all complex functioning.
The principle that the cortex of the brain operates as a coordinated system with large masses of neural tissue involved in all complex functioning.
The amount by which the mass of an atomic nucleus is less than the sum of the masses of its constituent particles.
The amount by which the mass of an atomic nucleus is less than the sum of the masses of its constituent particles.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: people or especially a large number of people
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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.