universe
noun
Simple meaning
A deity who is equivalent to the sum of everything that exists in the cosmos.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
yoonuhversSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈjunəvɚs
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
Our universe, the sum of everything that exists in the cosmos, including time and space itself.
pantheism
A deity who is equivalent to the sum of everything that exists in the cosmos.
Everything that exists anywhere
Everything under consideration.
An entity similar to our universe; one component of a larger entity known as the multiverse.
An imaginary collection of worlds; the general imaginary world within which a work of fiction takes place, broader than its immediate setting.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B1 · Intermediate
- Frequency
- Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Our universe, the sum of everything that exists in the cosmos, including time and space itself.
Used this way, universe 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
- Moderate
- 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.
More ways to use universe
- “They study the evolution of the universe.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Similar Words, What’s the Difference?
Close in meaning, but not always interchangeable.
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.
A grammatical rule (or other linguistic feature) that is found in all languages.
Everywhere.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
Everything stated or assumed in a given discussion.
The view that the universe resembles a clock built by God and ticking along according to Newtonian mechanics.
A universe that is spatially closed and in which there is sufficient matter to halt the expansion that began with the big bang.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
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.