portability
noun
Simple meaning
Being light enough to be carried.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
pawrtuhbilihteeSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
pɔɹtəˈbɪlɪti
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
The quality of being light enough to be carried
The quality of being portable.
The ability of a telephone subscriber to keep their number when switching to a different network.
The ability of an employee to move between different social security schemes without losing their contributions.
software
The ability of a program (or software system) to execute properly on multiple hardware platforms.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B2 · Upper Intermediate (estimated)
- Frequency
- Moderately Common
- Typical Use
- Varies by meaning
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: The quality of being light enough to be carried
Used this way, portability is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use portability
- “The laptop's portability makes it easy to work from anywhere.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
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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.