trust
noun · verb
Simple meaning
A belief that someone is honest and reliable.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
truhstIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈtɹʌst
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
Confidence in or reliance on some person or quality.
Confidence in the future payment for goods or services supplied; credit.
That upon which confidence is reposed; ground of reliance; hope.
Complete confidence in a person or plan etc
Dependence upon something in the future; hope.
That which is committed or entrusted; something received in confidence; a charge.
verb
transitive
To place confidence in, to rely on, to confide in.
Have confidence or faith in
“We can trust in our government.”
intransitivewith in
To have faith in; to rely on for continuing support or aid.
transitive
To give credence to; to believe; to credit.
transitive
To hope confidently; to believe (usually with a phrase or infinitive clause as the object)
transitive
To show confidence in a person by entrusting them with something.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A2 · Elementary
- Frequency
- Very Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Confidence in or reliance on some person or quality.
Used this way, trust 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
Nearby words
- commit , more casual, better suited to speech than writing
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use trust
- “He needs to regain her trust if he is ever going to win her back.”noun
- “I was out of cash, but the landlady let me have it on trust.”noun
- “We cannot trust anyone who deceives us.”verb
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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.
Inclined to believe or confide readily.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
A convict who is considered trustworthy and granted special privileges.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
An organization (usually with a commercial bank) that is engaged as a trustee or fiduciary or agent in handling trust funds or estates of custodial arrangements or stock transfers or…
An organization (usually with a commercial bank) that is engaged as a trustee or fiduciary or agent in handling trust funds or estates of custodial arrangements or stock transfers or…
Government activities seeking to dissolve corporate trusts and monopolies (especially under the United States antitrust laws).
A written instrument legally conveying property to a trustee often used to secure an obligation such as a mortgage or promissory note.
A savings account deposited by someone who makes themselves the trustee for a beneficiary and who controls it during their lifetime.
A fund held in trust.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
Worthy of trust or belief.
The trait of deserving trust and confidence.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
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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.