suspend
verb
Simple meaning
Bar temporarily; from school.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
suhspehndSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
səsˈpɛnd
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
Bar temporarily; from school, office, etc.
To discontinue or interrupt a function, task, position, or event.
To debar, or cause to withdraw temporarily, from any privilege, from the execution of an office, from the enjoyment of income, etc.
To halt something temporarily.
Hang freely
“The secret police suspended their victims from the ceiling and beat them.”
To bring a solid substance, usually in powder form, into suspension in a liquid.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B2 · Upper Intermediate (estimated)
- Frequency
- Moderately Common
- Typical Use
- Varies by meaning
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Bar temporarily; from school, office, etc.
Used this way, suspend is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in education or classroom contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- No strong connotation
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Education/classroom
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use suspend
- “The secret police suspended their victims from the ceiling and beat them.”verb
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
Elastic straps that hold trousers up (usually used in the plural).
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A temporary cessation of vital functions with loss of consciousness resembling death.
A wide belt of elastic with straps hanging from it.
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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.