parasite
noun
Simple meaning
An animal or plant that lives in or on a host.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
pehruhsytSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈpɛɹəsaɪt
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
informalspecifically
An internal parasite that is an animal or protist.
An animal or plant that lives in or on a host (another animal or plant); it obtains nourishment from the host without benefiting or killing the host
biology
An organism that lives on or in another organism of a different species, deriving benefit from living on or in that other organism, while not contributing towards that other organism sufficiently to cover the cost to that other organism.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: An animal or plant that lives in or on a host (another animal or plant); it obtains nourishment from the host without benefiting or killing the host
Used this way, parasite is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly unfavourable pull. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Negative
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Gentle
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Serious and weighty
- 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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Antonyms
Sense: internal parasite that is an animal or protist
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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.