signals
noun · verb
Form of signal , plural of signal.
Simple meaning
A sign made to give notice of some occurrence, command, or danger, or to indicate the start of a concerted action.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
signuhlzSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈsɪɡnəlz
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
plural of signal
A sign made to give notice of some occurrence, command, or danger, or to indicate the start of a concerted action.
plural of signal
A sequence of states representing an encoded message in a communication channel.
plural of signal
Any variation of a quantity or change in an entity over time that conveys information upon detection.
plural of signal
An on-off light, semaphore, or other device used to give an indication to another person.
verb
third-person singular of signal
Communicate silently and non-verbally by signals or signs
third-person singular of signal
Be a signal for or a symptom of
third-person singular of signal
To communicate with (a person or system) by a signal.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A sign made to give notice of some occurrence, command, or danger, or to indicate the start of a concerted action.
Used this way, signals is a reasonably familiar word with a faintly unfavourable edge. It turns up most in technical or specialist writing contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Slightly negative
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Critical or judgemental
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Technical/specialist writing
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
Any nonverbal action or gesture that encodes a message.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
Intelligence information gathered from communications intelligence or electronics intelligence or telemetry intelligence.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
A building from which signals are sent to control the movements of railway trains.
A building from which signals are sent to control the movements of railway trains.
A device used to send signals.
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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.