tobacco
noun · verb
Simple meaning
Leaves of Nicotiana tabacum and some other species cultivated and harvested to make cigarettes, cigars.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
tuhbakohSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
təˈbækoʊ
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
uncountable
Leaves of Nicotiana tabacum and some other species cultivated and harvested to make cigarettes, cigars, snuff, for smoking in pipes or for chewing.
Leaves of the tobacco plant dried and prepared for smoking or ingestion
countable
A variety of tobacco.
Two rivers in Michigan, United States.
verb
intransitive
To indulge in tobacco; to smoke.
transitive
To treat with tobacco.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B1 · Intermediate (estimated)
- Frequency
- Common
- Typical Use
- General English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Leaves of Nicotiana tabacum and some other species cultivated and harvested to make cigarettes, cigars, snuff, for smoking in pipes or for chewing.
Used this way, tobacco is a specialist word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a scientific use: it names something precisely within a field of study, so it appears in research and teaching more than in conversation.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Clinical and technical
- Usage feel
- Technical and specialized
Where it naturally appears
- Science
- Academic writing
- Technical/specialist writing
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Nearby words
- baccy , 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 tobacco
- “Smoking tobacco products can cause serious health problems over time.”
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
Large green white-striped hawkmoth larva that feeds on tobacco and related plants.
An industry that manufactures and sells products containing tobacco.
Saliva colored brown by tobacco (snuff or chewing tobacco).
Fungus causing a downy mildew on growing tobacco.
A plant disease causing discoloration of the leaves of tobacco plants.
The widely studied plant virus that causes tobacco mosaic.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
A shop that sells pipes and pipe tobacco and cigars and cigarettes.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: leaves of Nicotiana tabacum and some other species cultivated and harvested to make cigarettes
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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.