punk rock
noun
Simple meaning
Rock music with deliberately offensive lyrics expressing anger and social alienation.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
puhngkrahkSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈpʌŋkˈɹɑk
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
music
Rock music with deliberately offensive lyrics expressing anger and social alienation; in part a reaction against progressive rock
music
A genre of rock music associated with short, loud, energetic songs played on electric guitars and drums and employing angry, offensive, and/or political lyrics.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
This meaning: Rock music with deliberately offensive lyrics expressing anger and social alienation; in part a reaction against progressive rock
Used this way, punk rock is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly unfavourable pull. This is a musical use: it is everyday language among musicians and listeners, and specialised outside that.
- Emotional tone
- Negative
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Serious and weighty
- Usage feel
- Everyday but emotionally strong
Where it naturally appears
- Music/performance
- Arts writing
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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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.