oblige
verb
Simple meaning
To do a service or favour.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
uhblyjSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
əbˈlaɪdʒ
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.
verb
transitiveintransitive
To do (someone) a service or favour (hence, originally, creating an obligation).
Provide a service or favor for someone
transitive
To constrain someone by force or by social, moral or legal means.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient
- Frequency
- Uncommon
- Typical Use
- Primarily written
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: To do (someone) a service or favour (hence, originally, creating an obligation).
Used this way, oblige is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in ethics or values contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- No strong connotation
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Ethics/values
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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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
The social force that binds you to the courses of action demanded by that force.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
The obligation of those of high rank to be honorable and generous (often used ironically).
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
- payverb
- obligationnoun
- dutynoun
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: to do (someone) a service or favour (hence
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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.