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mental

adjective

Simple meaning

Involving the mind or an intellectual process.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

mehntuhl

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US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈmɛntəl

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.

adjective

  1. relational

    Involving the mind or an intellectual process

  2. relational

    Of or relating to the mind or specifically the total emotional and intellectual response of an individual to external reality.

  3. Relating to the mind, its activity, or its products as an object of study.

  4. Of or relating to intellectual as contrasted with emotional activity.

  5. Occurring or experienced in the mind.

  6. (colloquial, UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, dated in the US, Canada, comparable) Mentally disordered; insane, mad, crazy.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
A2 · Elementary
Frequency
Common
Typical Use
Everyday English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: Involving the mind or an intellectual process

Used this way, mental 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
No strong connotation
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

More ways to use mental

  • “Mental images of happy times.”adjective

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

mental healthmental illnessmental retardationmental statemental disordermental diseasemental hygienemental age

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Word family

Words built from the same root.

  • mentornounPerson or profession

    A wise and trusted guide and advisor.

  • mentationnounDerived noun · specialist

    The process of using your mind to consider something carefully.

  • mentallyadverbDerived adverb

    In your mind.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • mental conditionnounCompound term

    A mental condition in which the qualities of a state are relatively constant even though the state itself may be dynamic.

  • mental confusionnounCompound term

    A mental state characterized by a lack of clear and orderly thought and behavior.

  • mental defectivenessnounCompound term

    Retardation sufficient to fall outside the normal range of intelligence.

  • mental deficiencynounCompound term

    Mild mental retardation.

  • mental dexteritynounCompound term

    Intelligence as revealed by quickness and alertness of mind.

  • mental diseasenounCompound term

    Any disease of the mind.

Related words

Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.

  • mentalitynounRelated term

    A habitual or characteristic mental attitude that determines how you will interpret and respond to situations.

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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.