meningitis
noun
Simple meaning
Inflammation of the meninges, having headache, neck stiffness and photophobia and also fever, chills, vomiting and myalgia.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
mehnuhnjytuhsSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
mɛnənˈdʒaɪtəs
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
pathology
Inflammation of the meninges, characterized by headache, neck stiffness and photophobia and also fever, chills, vomiting and myalgia.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C1 · Advanced (estimated)
- Frequency
- Uncommon
- Formality
- Technical
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
This meaning: (pathology) Inflammation of the meninges, characterized by headache, neck stiffness and photophobia and also fever, chills, vomiting and myalgia.
Used this way, meningitis is a specialist word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a clinical use: it belongs to medical description, where it is factual rather than emotive.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Clinical and technical
- Usage feel
- Technical and specialized
Where it naturally appears
- Medicine/healthcare
- Science
- Technical/specialist writing
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
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.
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
Meningitis caused by bacteria and often fatal.
An infectious disease of animals and humans (especially newborn or immunosuppressed persons) caused by the bacterium Listeria monocytogenes.
Meningitis caused by bacteria and often fatal.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
A form of viral meningitis caused by a virus carried by the common house mouse.
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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.