nations
noun
Form of nation , plural of nation.
Simple meaning
A historically constituted, stable community of people, formed based on a common language, territory, economic life, ethnicity and/or psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
nayshuhnzSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈneɪʃənz
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
plural of nationcollective
A historically constituted, stable community of people, formed based on a common language, territory, economic life, ethnicity and/or psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.
plural of nation
A community united by some trait (especially an interest) but not historically constituted.
plural of nationinternational lawmetonymic
A sovereign state; (loosely, metonymic, proscribed) a country.
plural of nation
In North America, an Indigenous people and their federally recognized territory.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: (collective) A historically constituted, stable community of people, formed based on a common language, territory, economic life, ethnicity and/or psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.
Used this way, nations is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in finance or economics contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Finance/economics
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.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
An association of nations dedicated to economic and political cooperation in southeastern Asia and who joined with the United States to fight against global terrorism.
Courteous respect by one nation for the laws and institutions of another.
An association of nations consisting of the United Kingdom and several former British colonies that are now sovereign states but still pay allegiance to the British Crown.
A league of Iroquois tribes including originally the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca (the Five Nations).
The United Nations agency concerned with the international organization of food and agriculture.
The body of laws governing relations between nations.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
- peoplesnoun
- resolutionnoun
- palestinenoun
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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.