sweat equity
noun
Simple meaning
An investment of labour, usually by the owner and often his or her family.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
swehtuhkwuhteeSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈswɛtɛkwəti
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
idiomaticreal estatebusiness
An investment of labour, typically by the owner and often his or her family, usually in a small business or personal residence that increases the value of the business or residence.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: (idiomatic, real estate, business) An investment of labour, typically by the owner and often his or her family, usually in a small business or personal residence that increases the value of the business or residence.
Used this way, sweat equity is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It stays understated rather than dramatic. It turns up most in business or professional and finance or economics contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Mild
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Business/professional
- Finance/economics
- Family/home
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.