thermal
adjective
Simple meaning
About heat or temperature.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
thurmuhlSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈθɝməl
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.
adjective
Pertaining to heat or temperature.
fabric
Providing efficient insulation so as to keep the body warm.
Caused or brought about by heat.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B1 · Intermediate
- Frequency
- Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Pertaining to heat or temperature.
Used this way, thermal is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- No strong connotation
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Nearby words
- thermic , rarer, so it draws attention
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use thermal
- “Thermal movements of molecules.”adjective
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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.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
By means of heat or with respect to thermal properties.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A limit to high speed flight imposed by aerodynamic heating.
The emission of electrons from very hot substances.
Harm to lakes and rivers resulting from the release of excessive waste heat into them.
A printer that produces characters by applying heat to special paper that is sensitive to heat.
A system that converts sunlight into heat.
A nuclear reactor in which nuclear fissions are caused by neutrons that are slowed down by a moderator.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
A unit of heat equal to 100,000 British thermal units.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
- geothermaladjective
- heatnoun
- heatingnoun
- coolingnoun
- conductionnoun
- convectionnoun
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: pertaining to heat or temperature
Antonyms
Sense: pertaining to heat or temperature
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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.