would
verb · noun
Simple meaning
A modal verb, the subjunctive of will.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
wuudIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈwʊd
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.
verb
A modal verb, the subjunctive of will; usually followed by a bare infinitive.
Used as the auxiliary of the simple conditional modality, indicating a state or action that is conditional on another.
Used to form the "anterior future", or "future in the past", indicating a futurity relative to a past time.
Without explicit condition, or with loose or vague implied condition, indicating a hypothetical or imagined state or action.
Suggesting conditionality or potentiality in order to express a sense of politeness, tentativeness, indirectness, hesitancy, uncertainty, etc.
Used to express what the speaker would do in another person's situation, as a means of giving a suggestion or recommendation.
noun
Something that would happen, or would be the case, under different circumstances; a potentiality.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A modal verb, the subjunctive of will; usually followed by a bare infinitive.
Used this way, would 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.
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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.