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mood

noun

Simple meaning

A mental or emotional state.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

mood
US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈmud

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.

noun

  1. A mental or emotional state, composure.

  2. A sullen, gloomy or angry mental state; a bad mood.

  3. A prevalent atmosphere, attitude, or feeling.

  4. Emotional character (of a work of music, literature, or other art).

  5. A disposition to do something, a state of mind receptive or disposed to do something.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
B1 · Intermediate
Frequency
Common
Typical Use
Everyday English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: A mental or emotional state, composure.

Used this way, mood 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.

Sullen

Characteristic

new mood

Other combinations

bad moodmood disordergood mood

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Similar Words, What’s the Difference?

Close in meaning, but not always interchangeable.

  • temper

    A general tendency or orientation towards a certain type of mood, a volatile state.

  • mode

    One of various related sets of rules for processing data.

  • climate

    The context in general of a particular political, moral, etc., situation.

  • humour

    A characteristic (habitual or relatively temporary) state of feeling.

Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • imperative moodnounCompound term

    A mood that expresses an intention to influence the listener's behavior.

  • indicative moodnounCompound term

    A mood (grammatically unmarked) that represents the act or state as an objective fact.

  • interrogative moodnounCompound term

    Some linguists consider interrogative sentences to constitute a mood.

  • jussive moodnounCompound term

    A mood that expresses an intention to influence the listener's behavior.

  • optative moodnounCompound term

    A mood (as in Greek or Sanskrit) that expresses a wish or hope.

  • common moodnounCompound term

    A mood (grammatically unmarked) that represents the act or state as an objective fact.

Related Words

Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

Sense: mental or emotional state or composure

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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.