taliban
noun
Simple meaning
A fundamentalist Islamic militia.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
talihbanSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈtælɪbæn
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
A fundamentalist Islamic militia; in 1995 the Taliban militia took over Afghanistan and in 1996 took Kabul and set up an Islamic government
“The Taliban enforced a strict Muslim code of behavior.”
A member of the Taliban movement or its militia; a Talib.
A Deobandi Islamist and largely Pashtun religious political movement founded in Afghanistan in 1994 by mullah Mohammad Omar, which has governed the country from 1996 to 2001 and since 2021.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B2 · Upper Intermediate (estimated)
- Frequency
- Moderately Common
- Formality
- Technical
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A fundamentalist Islamic militia; in 1995 the Taliban militia took over Afghanistan and in 1996 took Kabul and set up an Islamic government
Used this way, taliban is a common word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in government or politics contexts.
“The Taliban enforced a strict Muslim code of behavior.”
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Government/politics
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use taliban
- “The Taliban enforced a strict Muslim code of behavior.”noun
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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.