perform
verb
Simple meaning
To do in front of an audience, such as acting or music, often to entertain.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
perfawrmSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
pɚˈfɔɹm
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
transitive
To act in accordance with (a contract); to fulfill one's terms of (a contract).
intransitive
To exhibit an expected pattern of behavior; to function; to work.
intransitive
To fulfill contractually agreed-to terms.
transitive
To behave in accordance with, and thereby in turn shape, (a social notion or role).
intransitive
To behave in ways that carry meaning in social contexts.
by extensiontransitive
To behave theatrically so as to give the impression of (a quality, character trait, etc.); to feign.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A1 · Beginner (estimated)
- Frequency
- Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: (ambitransitive) To do (something) in front of an audience, such as acting or music, often in order to entertain.
Used this way, perform is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a musical use: it is everyday language among musicians and listeners, and specialised outside that.
- 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
- Music/performance
- Arts writing
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use perform
- “Horowitz is performing at Carnegie Hall tonight.”verb
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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.
The performance of a part or role in a drama.
An entertainer who performs a dramatic or musical work for an audience.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
A dramatic or musical entertainment.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
An entertainer who performs a dramatic or musical work for an audience.
Arts or skills that require public performance.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
The capability of a technological system to perform as intended.
The act of performing a drama.
The act of performing music.
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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.