uncertainty
noun
Simple meaning
Being unsettled or in doubt or dependent on chance.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
uhnsurtuhnteeSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ənˈsɝtənti
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
Doubt; the condition of being uncertain or without conviction.
Being unsettled or in doubt or dependent on chance
uncountablemathematics
A parameter that measures the dispersion of a range of measured values.
countable
Something uncertain or ambiguous.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B2 · Upper Intermediate
- Frequency
- Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Doubt; the condition of being uncertain or without conviction.
Used this way, uncertainty 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
- incertitude , rarer, so it draws attention
- dubiety , rarer, so it draws attention
- doubtfulness , rarer, so it draws attention
- dubiousness , 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 uncertainty
- “The uncertainty of the outcome.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
The theory that it is impossible to measure both energy and time (or position and momentum) completely accurately at the same time.
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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.