regular army
n · noun
Simple meaning
A regular army is the official army of a state or country, contrasting with irregular forces, such as volunteer irregular militias, private armies.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
rehgyuhlerahrmeeSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈɹɛɡjəlɚˈɑɹmi
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.
n
A regular army is the official army of a state or country (the official armed forces), contrasting with irregular forces, such as volunteer irregular militias, private armies, mercenaries, etc.
The Regular Army of the United States succeeded the Continental Army as the country's permanent, professional land-based military force.
noun
A permanent organization of the military land forces of a nation or state
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A regular army is the official army of a state or country (the official armed forces), contrasting with irregular forces, such as volunteer irregular militias, private armies, mercenaries, etc.
Used this way, regular army is a specialist word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a military use: it belongs to service and operational language.
- 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
- Military
- Historical writing
- News/reporting
- 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.
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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.