surveying
noun
Simple meaning
The applied science of accurately determining the position of points and the distances between them.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
servayingSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
sɚˈveɪɪŋ
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
The applied science of accurately determining the position of points and the distances between them.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B2 · Upper Intermediate
- Frequency
- Moderately Common
- Typical Use
- Neutral / general English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
This meaning: The applied science of accurately determining the position of points and the distances between them.
Used this way, surveying is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in science and technical or specialist writing contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Science
- Technical/specialist writing
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use surveying
- “He studied surveying at college.”noun
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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.
Consider in a comprehensive way.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
An engineer who determines the boundaries and elevations of land or structures.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
An instrument used by surveyors.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
Surveying instrument consisting basically of a small telescope with an attached spirit level rotating around a vertical axis.
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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.