morbidity
noun
Simple meaning
The relative incidence of a particular disease.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
mawrbiduhteeSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
mɔɹˈbɪdəti
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
medicine
The relative incidence of a particular disease
medicine
The incidence of a disease, as a rate of a population which is affected.
demographyinsurance
The sickness rate of a population.
The quality of being unhealthful or diseased, sometimes including the cause.
The quality of being morbid; an attitude or state of mind marked by gloom.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B2 · Upper Intermediate (estimated)
- Frequency
- Uncommon
- Formality
- Technical
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: The relative incidence of a particular disease
Used this way, morbidity is a specialist word with a faintly unfavourable edge. This is a clinical use: it belongs to medical description, where it is factual rather than emotive.
- Emotional tone
- Slightly negative
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Critical or judgemental
- Usage feel
- Clinical and detached
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.
More ways to use morbidity
- “His fear of being alone verges on morbidity.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Relative / incidence
Adverse
Other combinations
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Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
- measlesnoun
- malarianoun
- epidemiologynoun
- pneumonianoun
- vaccinationnoun
- diarrheanoun
- incidencenoun
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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.