prestige
adjective · noun
Simple meaning
Respect and admiration that comes from success or status.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
prehsteezhSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
pɹɛsˈtiʒ
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.
adjective
sociolinguisticsof a linguistic form
Regarded as relatively prestigious; often, considered the standard language or language variety, or a part of such a variety.
noun
The quality of how good the reputation of something or someone is, how favourably something or someone is regarded.
uncountablevideo games
The act of starting over at an earlier point in a video game with some type of bonus or reward.
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: (sociolinguistics, of a linguistic form) Regarded as relatively prestigious; often, considered the standard language or language variety, or a part of such a variety.
Used this way, prestige is a specialist word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a grammar or language-study use: it describes how language works, so it appears in teaching and reference writing.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Clinical and technical
- Usage feel
- Technical and specialized
Where it naturally appears
- Academic writing
- Education/classroom
- Technical/specialist writing
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use prestige
- “He wanted to achieve power and prestige.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
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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.