paper
noun · adjective · verb
Simple meaning
A material made of cellulose pulp derived mainly from wood or rags or certain grasses.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
payperSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈpeɪpɚ
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
A material made of cellulose pulp derived mainly from wood or rags or certain grasses
A sheet material typically used for writing on or printing on (or as a non-waterproof container), usually made by draining cellulose fibres from a suspension in water.
A written document, generally shorter than a book; usually written as a school assignment or a government report.
A written document that reports scientific or academic research and is usually subjected to peer review before publication in a scientific journal (as a journal article or the manuscript for one) or in the proceedings of a scientific or academic meeting (such as a conference, workshop, or symposium).
rock paper scissors
An open hand (a handshape resembling a sheet of paper), that beats rock and loses to scissors. It loses to lizard and beats Spock in rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock.
A medicinal preparation spread upon paper, intended for external application.
adjective
Having a title that is merely official, or given by courtesy or convention.
Made of paper.
Insubstantial (from the weakness of common paper)
Planned (from plans being drawn up on paper)
verb
transitive
To document; to memorialize.
transitive
To fill (a theatre or other paid event) with complimentary seats.
transitive
To give public notice (typically by displaying posters) that a person is wanted by the police or other authority.
To paste the endpapers and flyleaves at the beginning and end of a book before fitting it into its covers.
transitive
To sandpaper.
transitive
To apply paper to.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A1 · Beginner (estimated)
- Frequency
- Very Common
- Typical Use
- General English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A material made of cellulose pulp derived mainly from wood or rags or certain grasses
Used this way, paper 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
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use paper
- “The notion of an office running without paper is absurd.”noun
- “He has written many scientific papers.”noun
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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.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
Writing that provides information (especially information of an official nature).
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
Electrophoresis carried out on filter paper.
A fastener for holding a sheet of paper in place.
A device for inserting sheets of paper into a printer or typewriter.
Brazilian vine that tends to flower continuously.
Reserve assets in the International Monetary Fund.
Dull knife used to cut open the envelopes in which letters are mailed or to slit uncut pages of books.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
A book with paper covers.
Work that involves handling papers: forms or letters or reports etc.
A weight used to hold down a stack of papers.
A book with paper covers.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: material made of cellulose pulp derived mainly from wood
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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.