taunt
verb · noun
Simple meaning
To tease or challenge someone in an insulting way.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
tawntIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈtɔnt
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
transitive
To make fun of (someone); to goad (a person) into responding, often in an aggressive manner.
noun
A scornful or mocking remark; a jeer or mockery.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient
- Frequency
- Rare
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: To make fun of (someone); to goad (a person) into responding, often in an aggressive manner.
Used this way, taunt is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly unfavourable pull. It comes across as direct, sometimes bluntly so.
- Emotional tone
- Negative
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Serious and weighty
- Usage feel
- Blunt and forceful
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
Aggravation by deriding or mocking or criticizing.
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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.