structure
noun · verb
Simple meaning
A cohesive whole built up of distinct parts.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
struhkcherSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈstɹʌktʃɚ
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
A cohesive whole built up of distinct parts.
The overall form or organization of something.
The underlying shape of a solid.
A body, such as a political party, with a cohesive purpose or outlook.
A set of rules defining behaviour.
verb
transitive
To give structure to; to arrange.
“I need to structure my days.”
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A1 · Beginner (estimated)
- Frequency
- Very Common
- Typical Use
- Varies by meaning
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A cohesive whole built up of distinct parts.
Used this way, structure 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 structure
- “Artists must study the structure of the human body.”noun
- “The structure consisted of a series of arches.”noun
- “I need to structure my days.”verb
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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.
Having definite and highly organized structure.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
Related to A cohesive whole built up of distinct parts.
With respect to structure.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
The presence of groups of closely spaced spectrum lines observed in the atomic spectrum of certain elements.
A structure of data having several levels arranged in a treelike structure.
A structure of data having several levels arranged in a treelike structure.
Any rigid body structure composed primarily of keratin.
Memorial consisting of a very large stone forming part of a prehistoric structure (especially in western Europe).
The muscular system of an organism.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
Linguistics defined as the analysis of formal structures in a text or discourse.
Support that is a constituent part of any structure or building.
An anthropological theory that there are unobservable social structures that generate observable social phenomena.
The branch of genomics that determines the three-dimensional structures of proteins.
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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.