sudden infant death syndrome
noun
Simple meaning
Sudden and unexpected death of an apparently healthy infant during sleep.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
suhduhninfuhntdehthsindrohmSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈsʌdəˈnɪnfəntˈdɛθˈsɪndɹoʊm
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
pathology
Sudden and unexpected death of an apparently healthy infant during sleep
pathology
The sudden and unexplained death of an infant aged one month to one year, normally while sleeping.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
This meaning: Sudden and unexpected death of an apparently healthy infant during sleep
Used this way, sudden infant death syndrome is a specialist word with a faintly unfavourable edge. This is a clinical use: it belongs to medical description, where it is factual rather than emotive.
- Emotional tone
- Slightly negative
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Sudden and forceful
- Usage feel
- Clinical and detached
Where it naturally appears
- Medicine/healthcare
- Science
- 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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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.