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subsidy

noun

Simple meaning

Financial support or assistance, such as a grant.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

suhbsihdee

Say the bold part a little louder.

US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈsʌbsɪdi

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. Financial support or assistance, such as a grant.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
B2 · Upper Intermediate
Frequency
Moderately Common
Typical Use
Neutral / general English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: Financial support or assistance, such as a grant.

Used this way, subsidy is a specialist word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a financial use: it has a settled meaning in accounting and business, where precision matters more than colour.

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

  • Finance/economics
  • Business/professional

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.

More ways to use subsidy

  • “A subsidy for research in artificial intelligence.”noun

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

Grant

government subsidypublic subsidyfederal subsidy

Other combinations

export subsidyannual subsidystate subsidysubsidy programdirect subsidy

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Word family

Words built from the same root.

  • subsidiarynounDerived noun

    An assistant subject to the authority or control of another.

  • subsidencenounDerived noun

    An abatement in intensity or degree (as in the manifestations of a disease).

  • subsidizeverbDerived verb

    Support through subsidies.

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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.