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opossum

noun

Simple meaning

Any American marsupial of the family Didelphidae in the order Didelphimorphia.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

ohpahsuhm

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US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

oʊˈpɑsəm

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.

noun

  1. Any American marsupial of the family Didelphidae in the order Didelphimorphia.

  2. Any of the marsupials in several families of the order Diprotodontia of Australia and neighboring islands.

  3. Small furry Australian arboreal marsupials having long usually prehensile tails

  4. Nocturnal arboreal marsupial having a naked prehensile tail found from southern North America to northern South America

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: Any American marsupial of the family Didelphidae in the order Didelphimorphia.

Used this way, opossum is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in family or home 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

  • Family/home

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

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More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

Sense: any American marsupial of the family Didelphidae in the order Didelphimorphia

possum

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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.