spurious
adjective
Simple meaning
False, not authentic, not genuine.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
spyooreeuhsSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈspjʊɹiəs
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.
adjective
False, not authentic, not genuine.
Extraneous, stray; not relevant or wanted.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: False, not authentic, not genuine.
Used this way, spurious 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
Nearby words
- unauthentic , rarer, so it draws attention
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.
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Similar Words, What’s the Difference?
Close in meaning, but not always interchangeable.
Not authentic or genuine.
False, especially of money.
Not authentic; inauthentic.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A correlation between two variables (e.g., between the number of electric motors in the home and grades at school) that does not result from any direct relation between them (buying…
Tuft of small stiff feathers on the first digit of a bird's wing.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: false or not authentic or not genuine
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What Does It Mean Here?
Words can change meaning depending on context.
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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.