maya
noun
Simple meaning
A flourishing Mesoamerican civilization that existed in and around Guatemala from the 3rd century to the 9th century.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
myuhSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈmaɪə
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 flourishing Mesoamerican civilization that existed in and around Guatemala from the 3rd century to the 9th century.
Various Mesoamerican peoples that continued in competing civilizations from the 10th century onward until conquered by Spain
A member or descendant of various peoples
A variety of Mesoamerican peoples with farming from around 1000 BC onward, who developed a large civilization from the 3rd century onward
Various Mesoamerican peoples living in the Spanish Empire, and now parts of Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras
An ethnic minority speaking Mayan languages and living in Yucatan and adjacent areas
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B1 · Intermediate (estimated)
- Frequency
- Moderately Common
- Typical Use
- Varies by meaning
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A flourishing Mesoamerican civilization that existed in and around Guatemala from the 3rd century to the 9th century.
Used this way, maya 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.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
United States sculptor and architect whose public works include the memorial to veterans of the Vietnam War in Washington (born in 1959).
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
A family of American Indian languages spoken by Mayas.
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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.