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traditional

adjective · noun

Simple meaning

Attached to old customs.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

truhdishuhnuhl

Say the bold part a little louder.

US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

tɹəˈdɪʃənəl

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.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

adjective

  1. Of, relating to, or derived from tradition.

  2. Consisting of or derived from tradition

  3. Observant of tradition; attached to old customs; old-fashioned.

  4. Relating to traditional Chinese.

  5. Communicated from ancestors to descendants by word only.

  6. In lieu of the name of the composer of a piece of music, whose real name is lost in the mists of time.

noun

  1. informaluncountable

    Art that is a part of the culture of a group of people, skills and knowledge of which are passed down through generations from master craftsmen to apprentices.

  2. usually in the plural

    Anything that is traditional, conventional, standard.

  3. A person with traditional beliefs.

  4. informaluncountable

    Ellipsis of traditional Chinese.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
A1 · Beginner (estimated)
Frequency
Very Common
Typical Use
Everyday English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: Of, relating to, or derived from tradition.

Used this way, traditional 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

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

More ways to use traditional

  • “Traditional history.”adjective

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

Art

traditional roletraditional society

Other combinations

traditional valuestraditional viewtraditional culturetraditional familytraditional waystraditional sense

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Word family

Words built from the same root.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

Sense: art that is a part of the culture of a group of people

Antonyms

Sense: of or relating to or or derived from tradition

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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.