principled
adjective
Simple meaning
Guided by strong beliefs about what is right.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
prinsuhpuhldSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈpɹɪnsəpəld
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
Based on or manifesting objectively defined standards of rightness or morality
Based on, having, or manifesting principles
Strongly adhering to, or heedful of, guiding beliefs or moral rules
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient (estimated)
- Frequency
- Uncommon
- Typical Use
- Primarily written
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Based on or manifesting objectively defined standards of rightness or morality
Used this way, principled is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in ethics or values contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- No strong connotation
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
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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Common Patterns and Combinations
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
A basic generalization that is accepted as true and that can be used as a basis for reasoning or conduct.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Antonyms
Sense: based on or manifesting objectively defined standards of rightness
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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.