menses
noun
Form of mense , plural of mense.
Simple meaning
The monthly discharge of blood from the uterus of nonpregnant women from puberty to menopause.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
mehnsizSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈmɛnsɪz
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
The monthly discharge of blood from the uterus of nonpregnant women from puberty to menopause
“The women were sickly and subject to excessive menstruation.”
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient (estimated)
- Frequency
- Rare
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
This meaning: The monthly discharge of blood from the uterus of nonpregnant women from puberty to menopause
Used this way, menses is a common 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
- 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.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
Of or relating to menstruation or the menses.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: monthly discharge of blood from the uterus of nonpregnant women from puberty to menopause
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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.