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stroke

noun · verb

Simple meaning

An act of hitting.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

strohk
US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈstɹoʊk

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.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. An act of hitting; a blow, a hit.

  2. ball games

    An act of hitting or trying to hit a ball; also, the manner in which this is done.

  3. golf

    The unit of scoring in golf is the act of hitting the ball with a club

  4. A single movement with a tool; also, an impact of a tool on an object.

  5. An act of striking with a weapon; a blow.

  6. A single complete movement

verb

  1. transitive

    To draw the horizontal line across the upright part (of the letter t).

  2. To move one's hand or an object (such as a broom or brush) along (a surface) in one direction, touching it lightly; to caress.

  3. also figuratively

    To bring (something) to a certain condition by stroking (sense 1).

  4. transitive

    Followed by out or through: to draw a line or lines through (text) to indicate that it is deleted; to cancel, to strike or strike out.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
B1 · Intermediate
Frequency
Common
Typical Use
Everyday English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: An act of hitting; a blow, a hit.

Used this way, stroke 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.

More ways to use stroke

  • “She applied the paint in careful strokes.”noun
  • “It took two strokes to get out of the bunker.”noun

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

Hitting / unit

first stroke

Single

stroke volumesingle stroke

Other combinations

heat strokeischemic strokebold strokereturn stroke

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Inflected forms

Grammatical variations of the same word.

  • strokingnounInflected form

    A light touch with the hands.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • stroke playnounCompound term

    Golf scoring by total strokes taken.

  • four-stroke internal-combustion enginenounCompound term

    An internal-combustion engine in which an explosive mixture is drawn into the cylinder on the first stroke and is compressed and ignited on the second stroke.

  • golf strokenounCompound term

    The act of swinging a golf club at a golf ball and (usually) hitting it.

  • ground strokenounCompound term

    A tennis return made by hitting the ball after it has bounced once.

  • haemorrhagic strokenounCompound term

    Stroke caused by the rupture of a blood vessel in the brain.

  • hair strokenounCompound term

    A very fine line in writing or printing.

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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.