universal
adjective
Simple meaning
Common to all members of a group or class.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
yoonuhvursuhlSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
junəˈvɝsəl
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.
adjective
Common to all members of a group or class.
Common to all society; worldwide.
Useful for many purposes; all-purpose.
Of or pertaining to the universe.
Unlimited; vast; infinite.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A1 · Beginner (estimated)
- Frequency
- Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Common to all members of a group or class.
Used this way, universal 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 universal
- “Some form of religion seems to be a human universal.”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.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
The body of faculty and students at a university.
Everywhere.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A logical quantifier of a proposition that asserts that the proposition is true for all members of a class of things.
The address of a web page on the world wide web.
The set that contains all the elements or objects involved in the problem under consideration.
Hypothetical universal solvent once sought by alchemists.
Suffrage for all adults who are not disqualified by the laws of the country.
The local time at the 0 meridian passing through Greenwich, England.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
The quality of being universal.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: common to all members of a group or class
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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.