suppress
verb
Simple meaning
To put an end to.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
suhprehsSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
səpˈɹɛs
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.
verb
To put an end to, especially with force, to crush, do away with; to prohibit, subdue.
To restrain or repress, such as laughter or an expression.
To prevent publication.
To stop a flow or stream.
psychiatry
To exclude undesirable thoughts from one's mind.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C1 · Advanced
- Frequency
- Moderately Common
- Typical Use
- Neutral / general English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: To put an end to, especially with force, to crush, do away with; to prohibit, subdue.
Used this way, suppress 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
- No strong connotation
- 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 suppress
- “Suppress a nascent uprising.”verb
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
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Similar Words, What’s the Difference?
Close in meaning, but not always interchangeable.
Put down by force or intimidation.
To put down by force or authority.
To put into bottles.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
Kept from public knowledge by various means.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A gene that suppresses the phenotypic expression of another gene (especially of a mutant gene).
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
Someone who suppresses.
A drug that suppresses appetite.
A gene that suppresses the phenotypic expression of another gene (especially of a mutant gene).
A drug that suppresses appetite.
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Words can change meaning depending on context.
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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.