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nourish

verb

Simple meaning

To educate or bring up.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

nurish

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US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈnɝɪʃ

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.

verb

  1. transitiveof a person

    To educate or bring up; to nurture; to promote emotional, spiritual or other non-physical growth.

  2. transitive

    To feed and cause to grow; to supply with food or other matter which increases weight and promotes health.

  3. transitive

    To support; to maintain; to be responsible for.

  4. transitive

    To encourage; to foster; to stimulate

  5. intransitive

    To promote growth; to furnish nutriment.

  6. transitive

    To cherish; to comfort.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
C2 · Proficient (estimated)
Frequency
Uncommon
Typical Use
Primarily written

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: (transitive, of a person) To educate or bring up; to nurture; to promote emotional, spiritual or other non-physical growth.

Used this way, nourish 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.

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Inflected forms

Grammatical variations of the same word.

  • nourishedadjectiveInflected form

    Being provided with adequate nourishment.

Word family

Words built from the same root.

  • nourishmentnounDerived noun

    A source of materials to nourish the body.

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

Sense: to educate or bring up

alimentArchaic

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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.