should
verb · noun
Simple meaning
Ought to; indicating opinion, advice, or instruction, about what is required or desirable.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
shuudIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈʃʊd
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.
verb
Ought to; indicating opinion, advice, or instruction, about what is required or desirable.
To make a statement of what ought to be true, as opposed to reality.
Used to give advice or opinion that an action is, or would have been, beneficial or desirable.
Ought to; expressing expectation.
Used to issue an instruction (traditionally seen as carrying less force of authority than alternatives such as 'shall' or 'must').
Indicates that something is expected to have happened or to be the case now.
noun
Something that ought to be the case as opposed to already being the case.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Ought to; indicating opinion, advice, or instruction, about what is required or desirable.
Used this way, should 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
- No strong connotation
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
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.