submarine
noun · adjective · verb
Simple meaning
A boat that can go underwater.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
suhbmereenSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈsʌbmɚin
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
nautical
A boat that can go underwater.
A large sandwich made of a long crusty roll split lengthwise and filled with meats and cheese (and tomato and onion and lettuce and condiments); different names are used in different sections of the United States
A kind of sandwich made in a long loaf of bread.
Any submarine plant or animal.
informal
A stowaway on a seagoing vessel.
adjective
Being, relating to, or made for use underwater, especially beneath the sea.
Hidden or undisclosed.
verb
transitive
To torpedo; to destroy with a sudden sneak attack.
Attack by submarine
Control a submarine
intransitive
To operate or serve on a submarine.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B2 · Upper Intermediate (estimated)
- Frequency
- Moderately Common
- Formality
- Technical
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A boat that can go underwater.
Used this way, submarine is a specialist word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a nautical use: it is standard at sea and largely unfamiliar ashore.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Clinical and technical
- Usage feel
- Technical and specialized
Where it naturally appears
- Sailing/maritime
- Technical/specialist writing
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
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.
A member of the crew of a submarine.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
An earthquake at the sea bed.
A large sandwich made of a long crusty roll split lengthwise and filled with meats and cheese (and tomato and onion and lettuce and condiments).
A torpedo designed to be launched from a submarine.
A pitch thrown sidearm instead of overhead.
A pitch thrown sidearm instead of overhead.
A submarine for research purposes.
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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.