thriller
noun
Simple meaning
A suspenseful adventure story or play or movie.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
thrilerSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈθɹɪlɚ
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
filmliterature
A suspenseful adventure story or play or movie
filmliterature
A suspenseful, sensational genre of story, book, play, film.
beverages
A sharp, usually sweetened herbal tea flavored with a fruit or berry.
generally
Something that thrills.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B2 · Upper Intermediate
- Frequency
- Moderately Common
- Typical Use
- Neutral / general English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A suspenseful adventure story or play or movie
Used this way, thriller is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in literature or storytelling contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Literature/storytelling
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use thriller
- “We watched an exciting thriller movie last night that kept us guessing.”
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
The swift release of a store of affective force.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
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What Does It Mean Here?
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.