preschool
noun · adjective · verb
Simple meaning
An educational institution for children too young for elementary school.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
preeskoolSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
pɹisˈkul
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
An educational institution for children too young for elementary school
philippines
A school including nursery and kindergarten. It is succeeded by elementary school.
adjective
Of or relating to the years of early childhood before attendance at primary school.
verb
transitive
To provide nursery school education for.
intransitive
To undergo nursery school education.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B1 · Intermediate (estimated)
- Frequency
- Moderately Common
- Typical Use
- General and technical use
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: An educational institution for children too young for elementary school
Used this way, preschool is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in education or classroom contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Education/classroom
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use preschool
- “My youngest child is excited to start preschool next Fall.”
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
A child who attends a preschool or kindergarten.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
- elementaryadjective
- kindergartennoun
- childcarenoun
- classroomnoun
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What Does It Mean Here?
Words can change meaning depending on context.
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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.