tofu
noun
Simple meaning
Cheeselike food made of curdled soybean milk.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
tohfooSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈtoʊfu
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
Cheeselike food made of curdled soybean milk
A protein-rich food made from curdled soy milk.
computingtypography
A box or rectangle, empty or with a question mark or hexadecimal code inside, displayed by some systems in place of a character not supported by available fonts. (such as _□ or )
marketing
Initialism of top of funnel.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C1 · Advanced (estimated)
- Frequency
- Uncommon
- Typical Use
- Varies by meaning
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Cheeselike food made of curdled soybean milk
Used this way, tofu 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
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
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.