politician
noun
Simple meaning
A sly or ingratiating person.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
pahluhtishuhnSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
pɑləˈtɪʃən
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
One engaged in politics, especially an elected or appointed government official.
Specifically, one who regards elected political office as a career.
A person active in party politics
A politically active or interested person.
A sly or ingratiating person.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B2 · Upper Intermediate
- Frequency
- Moderately Common
- Typical Use
- Neutral / general English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: One engaged in politics, especially an elected or appointed government official.
Used this way, politician is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in government or politics contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Official and authoritative
- Usage feel
- Formal and precise
Where it naturally appears
- Government/politics
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use politician
- “The politician promised to work hard for the community.”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.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A politician who belongs to a small clique that controls a political party for private rather than public ends.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
- mayornoun
- diplomatnoun
- parliamentnoun
- legislativeadjective
- constituencynoun
- businessmannoun
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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.