pleasure principle
noun
Simple meaning
The governing principle of the id.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
plehzherprinsuhpuhlSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈplɛʒɚpˈɹɪnsəpəl
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
psychologypsychoanalysisFreudianism
The governing principle of the id; the principle that an infant seeks gratification and fails to distinguish fantasy from reality
psychologypsychoanalysisFreudianism
The principle that human decisions and behavior are strongly motivated by the instinctual desire of the id, arising in infancy, to experience pleasure and avoid pain.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: (psychoanalysis) the governing principle of the id; the principle that an infant seeks gratification and fails to distinguish fantasy from reality
Used this way, pleasure principle is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly unfavourable pull. It turns up most in ethics or values contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Negative
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Gentle
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Serious and weighty
- Usage feel
- Critical but measured
Where it naturally appears
- Ethics/values
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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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.