persuade
verb
Simple meaning
To get someone to believe or do something by giving reasons.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
perswaydSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
pɚsˈweɪd
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 successfully convince (someone) to agree to, accept, or do something, usually through reasoning and verbal influence.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C1 · Advanced
- Frequency
- Moderately Common
- Typical Use
- Neutral / general English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: To successfully convince (someone) to agree to, accept, or do something, usually through reasoning and verbal influence.
Used this way, persuade is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly warm, approving pull. It quietly approves while staying precise.
- Emotional tone
- Positive
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Gentle
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Successful and accomplished
- Usage feel
- Precise and approving
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use persuade
- “That salesman was able to persuade me into buying this bottle of lotion.”verb
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
- agreeverb
- surrenderverb
- convinceverb
- letverb
- unsuccessfuladjective
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
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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.