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questioning

noun · adjective

Simple meaning

Showing doubt or curiosity about something.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

kwehschuhning

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US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈkwɛstʃənɪŋ

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.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. The act of challenging, wondering, and doubting.

  2. The action of asking questions; a survey; an inquiry.

  3. Interrogation.

adjective

  1. Characterized by questions, inquisitiveness, doubt, or wonder; quizzical.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
B2 · Upper Intermediate
Frequency
Moderately Common
Typical Use
Neutral / general English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: The act of challenging, wondering, and doubting.

Used this way, questioning 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 questioning

  • “The police conducted a thorough questioning of all witnesses after the incident.”noun

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

questioning lookdirect questioning

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Inflected forms

Grammatical variations of the same word.

  • questionnounBase word

    An instance of questioning.

Word family

Words built from the same root.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • line of questioningnounCompound term

    An ordering of questions so as to develop a particular argument.

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

noun

Sense: challenging or wondering or and doubting

inquiring

adjective

Sense: characterized by questions or inquisitiveness or doubt

skepticalwonderingquizzical

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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.