whiskers
n · noun
Form of whisker , plural of whisker.
Simple meaning
Whiskers or vibrissae are a type of stiff, functional hair used by most therian mammals to sense their environment.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
wiskerzSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈwɪskɚz
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.
n
Whiskers or vibrissae (: vibrissa; ) are a type of stiff, functional hair used by most therian mammals to sense their environment.
noun
The hair growing on the lower part of a man's face
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient
- Frequency
- Uncommon
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Whiskers or vibrissae (: vibrissa; ) are a type of stiff, functional hair used by most therian mammals to sense their environment.
Used this way, whiskers is a specialist word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in technical or specialist writing contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Clinical and technical
- Usage feel
- Technical and specialized
Where it naturally appears
- Technical/specialist writing
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Nearby words
- beard , a specialist term, precise but narrower
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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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.
A very small distance or space.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
A liquor made from fermented mash of grain.
A liquor made from fermented mash of grain.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
Facial hair that has grown down the side of a man's face in front of the ears (especially when the rest of the beard is shaved off).
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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.