story
noun · verb
Simple meaning
An account of real or fictional events.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
stawreeSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈstɔɹi
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
An account of real or fictional events.
A sequence of events, or a situation, such as might be related in an account.
A piece of fiction that narrates a chain of related events
A trivial lie
A lie, fiction.
A ghost town in St. Clair County, Missouri.
verb
transitive
To tell as a story; to relate or narrate about.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A1 · Beginner
- Frequency
- Very Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: An account of real or fictional events.
Used this way, story 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.
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Similar Words, What’s the Difference?
Close in meaning, but not always interchangeable.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
A structure consisting of a room or set of rooms at a single position along a vertical scale.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A narrative about someone who investigates crimes and obtains evidence leading to their resolution.
An indelicate joke.
A story about fairies.
An account of an amusing incident (usually with a punch line).
An account of an amusing incident (usually with a punch line).
A story of an adventure.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
Someone who tells a story.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
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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.