morbid
adjective
Simple meaning
Taking an interest in, or fixating on, unhealthy or unwholesome subjects such as death, decay.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
mawrbuhdSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈmɔɹbəd
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.
adjective
by extension
Taking an interest in, or fixating on, unhealthy or unwholesome subjects such as death, decay, disease.
Suggesting the horror of death; macabre or ghoulish.
Grisly or gruesome.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Taking an interest in, or fixating on, unhealthy or unwholesome subjects such as death, decay, disease.
Used this way, morbid is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly unfavourable pull. It carries more force than its gentler alternatives. It turns up most in medicine or healthcare and personal or emotional discussion contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Negative
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Strong
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Serious and weighty
- Usage feel
- Everyday but emotionally strong
Where it naturally appears
- Medicine/healthcare
- Personal/emotional discussion
- Literature/storytelling
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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Similar Words, What’s the Difference?
Close in meaning, but not always interchangeable.
Affected with or suffering from disease.
Caused by or related to disease, pathology.
Of or relating to the practice of pathology.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
The relative incidence of a particular disease.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: taking an interest in or or fixating on
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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.