synonym essay noun

US:USA pronunciation: respellingUSA pronunciation: respelling( es ā , ; es ā, e sā – ; v. e sā )

Translations: | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

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Definition of essay noun from the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary

• I have to write an essay this weekend.
• essay on something an essay on the causes of the First World War
• essay about somebody/something Have you done your essay about Napoleon yet?
• in an essay He made some very good points in his essay.
• Essays handed in late will not be accepted.
• Have you done your essay yet?
• He concludes the essay by calling for a corrective.
• I finished my essay about 10 o'clock last night!
• Lunch was the only time she could finish her essay assignment.
• We have to write an essay on the environment.
• You have to answer 3 out of 8 essay questions in the exam.
• the teenage winner of an essay contest
• We have to write an essay on the causes of the First World War.
• be entitled something
• be titled something
• address something
• in an/​the essay
• essay about

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What is another word for essay ?

Synonyms for essay ˈɛs eɪ or, for 3,5 , ɛˈseɪ; ɛˈseɪ es·say, this thesaurus page includes all potential synonyms, words with the same meaning and similar terms for the word essay ., english synonyms and antonyms rate these synonyms: 2.7 / 3 votes.

To attempt is to take action somewhat experimentally with the hope and purpose of accomplishing a certain result; to endeavor is to attempt strenuously and with firm and enduring purpose. To attempt expresses a single act; to endeavor , a continuous exertion; we say I will endeavor (not I will attempt ) while I live. To attempt is with the view of accomplishing; to essay , with a view of testing our own powers. To undertake is to accept or take upon oneself as an obligation, as some business, labor, or trust; the word often implies complete assurance of success; as, I will undertake to produce the witness. To strive suggests little of the result, much of toil, strain, and contest, in seeking it; I will strive to fulfil your wishes, i. e. , I will spare no labor and exertion to do it. Try is the most comprehensive of these words. The original idea of testing or experimenting is not thought of when a man says "I will try ." To attempt suggests giving up, if the thing is not accomplished at a stroke; to try implies using other means and studying out other ways if not at first successful. Endeavor is more mild and formal; the pilot in the burning pilot-house does not say "I will endeavor " or "I will attempt to hold the ship to her course," but "I'll try , sir!"

Synonyms: attempt , endeavor , endeavor , strive , try , undertake

Antonyms: abandon , dismiss , drop , give up , let go , neglect , omit , overlook , pass by , throw away , throw over , throw up

Princeton's WordNet Rate these synonyms: 1.0 / 2 votes

an analytic or interpretive literary composition

a tentative attempt

try, seek, attempt, essay, assay verb

make an effort or attempt

"He tried to shake off his fears"; "The infant had essayed a few wobbly steps"; "The police attempted to stop the thief"; "He sought to improve himself"; "She always seeks to do good in the world"

Synonyms: attempt , examine , search , stress , adjudicate , strain , seek , look for , assay , try out , try , prove , test , try on , taste , hear , set about , undertake , sample , judge , render

test, prove, try, try out, examine, essay verb

put to the test, as for its quality, or give experimental use to

"This approach has been tried with good results"; "Test this recipe"

Synonyms: audition , rise , analyze , leaven , try , sample , show , testify , establish , test , evidence , try out , study , examine , see , seek , try on , probe , quiz , attempt , raise , adjudicate , render , prove , shew , judge , screen , taste , turn out , demonstrate , turn up , experiment , strain , analyse , stress , hear , canvass , assay , canvas , bear witness

Matched Categories

Editors contribution rate these synonyms: 0.0 / 0 votes.

piece of writing

write an essay of a students

Dictionary of English Synonymes Rate these synonyms: 0.0 / 0 votes

Synonyms: attempt , try , endeavor

Synonyms: attempt , trial , endeavor , effort , struggle , aim

Synonyms: tract , dissertation , treatise , disquisition , brief discourse

Synonyms, Antonyms & Associated Words Rate these synonyms: 0.0 / 0 votes

Synonyms: dissertation , article , disquisition , thesis , attempt , effort , trial

PPDB, the paraphrase database Rate these paraphrases: 1.0 / 1 vote

List of paraphrases for "essay":

dissertation , test , trial , drafting , composition , testing

How to pronounce essay?

How to say essay in sign language, words popularity by usage frequency.

How to use essay in a sentence?

Expert-Writers will help you to write the best essay ever. Your teacher will never recognize that this ws written by professioanls. Get excellent mark without any problems.

Noreen Farrell :

It’s weird being a public figure talking about all of this stuff because you put a target on your nose, when I wrote that essay I got a lot of support but I also have a Republican family in Kentucky who told me my career was effectively over.

Lee Drake :

A bad grade is only one letter in the Essay of life.

Laura Bush :

I was shocked, george had never even looked at art…he read Churchill’s little essay ‘Painting as a Pastime,’ and at the same time he got an app on his iPad where he could draw stick figures; when he was on the road he’d draw himself at a podium giving a speech, sending it to me, and somehow he started thinking about becoming a painter.

Neama Rahmani :

Bail reform and COVID delays claim another innocent victim, george Gascon has been largely criticized for the increase in violent crime in Los Angeles. Los Angeles’s time George Gascon stops acting like a defense attorney and allows prosecutors to charge violent felons with sentencing enhancements. George Gascon, the progressive Los Angeles district attorney, has raised the ire of law enforcement and George Gascon own assistant DAs for George Gascon allegedly soft-on-crime policies. Los Angeles POLICE ID Shawn Laval Smith AS SUSPECTED KILLER OF Brianna Kupfer Homicides are up more than 60 % in the City of Los Angeles and over 90 % in Los Angeles, according to records from the LAPD and sheriff’s office. Eric Siddall, the vice president of the Association of Los Angeles Deputy District Attorneys, excoriated Gascon in an essay published to the union’s website this week.

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• essayist noun
• essence noun

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[ noun es -ey es -ey , e- sey verb e- sey ]

• a short literary composition on a particular theme or subject, usually in prose and generally analytic, speculative, or interpretative.

a picture essay.

• an effort to perform or accomplish something; attempt.
• Philately. a design for a proposed stamp differing in any way from the design of the stamp as issued.
• Obsolete. a tentative effort; trial; assay.

verb (used with object)

• to try; attempt.
• to put to the test; make trial of.
• a short literary composition dealing with a subject analytically or speculatively
• an attempt or endeavour; effort
• a test or trial
• to attempt or endeavour; try
• to test or try out
• A short piece of writing on one subject, usually presenting the author's own views. Michel de Montaigne , Francis Bacon (see also Bacon ), and Ralph Waldo Emerson are celebrated for their essays.

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Other words from.

• es·sayer noun
• prees·say verb (used without object)
• unes·sayed adjective
• well-es·sayed adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of essay 1

Example Sentences

As several of my colleagues commented, the result is good enough that it could pass for an essay written by a first-year undergraduate, and even get a pretty decent grade.

GPT-3 also raises concerns about the future of essay writing in the education system.

This little essay helps focus on self-knowledge in what you’re best at, and how you should prioritize your time.

As Steven Feldstein argues in the opening essay, technonationalism plays a part in the strengthening of other autocracies too.

He’s written a collection of essays on civil engineering life titled Bridginess, and to this day he and Lauren go on “bridge dates,” where they enjoy a meal and admire the view of a nearby span.

I think a certain kind of compelling essay has a piece of that.

The current attack on the Jews,” he wrote in a 1937 essay, “targets not just this people of 15 million but mankind as such.

The impulse to interpret seems to me what makes personal essay writing compelling.

To be honest, I think a lot of good essay writing comes out of that.

Someone recently sent me an old Joan Didion essay on self-respect that appeared in Vogue.

There is more of the uplifted forefinger and the reiterated point than I should have allowed myself in an essay.

Consequently he was able to turn in a clear essay upon the subject, which, upon examination, the king found to be free from error.

It is no part of the present essay to attempt to detail the particulars of a code of social legislation.

But angels and ministers of grace defend us from ministers of religion who essay art criticism!

It is fit that the imagination, which is free to go through all things, should essay such excursions.

Related Words

• dissertation

• Cambridge Dictionary +Plus

Meaning of essay in English

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• I want to finish off this essay before I go to bed .
• His essay was full of spelling errors .
• Have you given that essay in yet ?
• Have you handed in your history essay yet ?
• I'd like to discuss the first point in your essay.
• boilerplate
• composition
• corresponding author
• dissertation
• essay question
• peer review
• go after someone
• go all out idiom
• go down swinging/fighting idiom
• go for it idiom
• go for someone
• shoot for the moon idiom
• shoot the works idiom
• smarten (someone/something) up
• smarten up your act idiom
• square the circle idiom

essay | Intermediate English

Examples of essay, collocations with essay.

These are words often used in combination with essay .

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Translations of essay

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a bear with white fur that lives in the Arctic

Fakes and forgeries (Things that are not what they seem to be)

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Hip-Hop at 50

How Hip-Hop Changed the English Language Forever

By Miles Marshall Lewis Aug. 11, 2023

• Share full article

In 50 years, rap transformed the English language, bringing the Black vernacular’s vibrancy to the world.

“Dave, the dope fiend shootin’ dope.” — Slick Rick, “Children’s Story” (1988)

“ Dope man, dopeman!” — N.W.A, “Dope Man” (1987)

Read 10:28 PM

Homer Simpson going ghost .

We unpacked five words — dope, woke, cake, wildin’ and ghost — that show rap’s unique linguistic influence.

“Four, five seconds from wildin’ ” — Rihanna, “FourFiveSeconds” (2015)

The Daily News reported on wilding in April 1989.

“I stay woke ” — Erykah Badu, “Master Teacher” (2008)

In 2017, woke made a wry breakthrough as a “Jeopardy!” category.

“I got cake and I know he want a slice” — Megan Thee Stallion, “Sweetest Pie” (2022)

With wordplay, wit and ingenuity, hip-hop artists are reshaping the way we speak.

By Miles Marshall Lewis

[doʊp] noun. A recreational drug; adj. Very good. One emblematic use of linguistic transformation in hip-hop is the total inversion of a word’s meaning. Consider “dope,” which apparently originated in the 19th century from the Dutch doop, which means “dipping sauce.” In 1909, “dope” was employed to describe the “thick treacle-like preparation used in opium smoking,” per the Oxford English Dictionary. But “dope” also had another meaning: a stupid person. In the wider culture, stereotypes of Black people as being unintelligent still endured, so it was an act of radical reclamation when, in the 1980s, rappers began to use “dope” to refer to superlative music, lyrics, fashion or anything else considered praiseworthy.

Supposedly the first known use in hip-hop: “You better look alive, not like you take dope ” — Spoonie Gee, “Spoonin Rap” (1979).

“You gon’ be a dope fiend, your friends should call you Dopey” — Lil Wayne, “Every Girl” (2009)

“Just give me one more sniffle/Another sniffle of that dope ” — Victoria Spivey’s “Dope Head Blues” (1927)

Hip-hop made “dope” — and also the genre at large — the arbiter of cool . And unlike similar inversions like “sick” or “bomb,” its pop-cultural usage as a synonym for “outstanding” persists into the present day.

“It’s just two dope boys in a Cadillac” — OutKast, “Two Dope Boyz (In a Cadillac)” (1996)

“ Dope ” (executive produced by Pharrell Williams) crafted a coming-of-age dramatic comedy for Generation Z, starring Shameik Moore, the rapper A$AP Rocky and Zoë Kravitz.

“Yo, I’m crazy dope , with super hype lines/And a lot of hype lines make one dope rhyme” — LL Cool J, “Why Do You Think They Call It Dope?” (1989)

“ Dope ” is such a part of the American lexicon that it has been written into dialogue in popular TV shows: HBO’s “2 Dope Queens” and NBC’s “The Good Place” and “Friends.”

“Be young, be dope , be proud/Like an American” — Lana Del Rey, “American” (2012). The music video references the American adventure comedy film “Joe Dirt.”

[‘wok] adj. The state of being aware or conscious. It started as the simple past tense of the word “wake,” meaning the state of being awake, partly from the Middle English wakien. The Pan-Africanist activist Marcus Garvey used aphorisms like “Wake up, Ethiopia! Wake up, Africa!” back in the early 1920s. Eighty years later, on her “MTV Unplugged No. 2.0” album, Lauryn Hill would go on to repeat the same sentiment: “Wake up and rebel/We must destroy in order to rebuild.” The modern sociopolitical application of “woke” was repopularized by the Black Lives Matter movement and the reprise of both protest music and conscious rap that followed in the early 2010s.

The Black nationalist Marcus Garvey intoned “ Wake up, Africa!” in the 1920s.

The blues singer Ramblin’ Thomas sang “stay woke ” on “Sawmill Moan” (1928).

The novelist William Melvin Kelley’s 1962 New York Times essay presciently explored the appropriation of intra-cultural Black language.

Erykah Badu’s 2008 song “Master Teacher” repopularized “ woke ” within hip-hop culture. Badu recently said that the word “doesn’t belong to us anymore.” But months later, she went on to say: “Woke can never be dead. ... No matter what people say it is, it is a state of being.”

“But stay woke /Niggas creepin’/They gon’ find you/Gon’ catch you sleepin’” — Childish Gambino, “Redbone” (2016)

The use of the word “woke” in hip-hop lyrics surged once again after the 2016 presidential election of Donald J. Trump: including Kendrick Lamar’s “N95” (“Take off the fake woke”), Joey Bada$$’s “Good Morning Amerikkka” (“Some of us woke while some stay snoozed”), Lil Durk’s “Home Body” (“Stay woke, you can’t take it”), 6LACK’s “Nonchalant” (“Claim they woke but they probably asleep”) and many others. But “woke” soon became a source of derision, as evidenced by comments from the Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis and the billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk. It remains to be seen whether mockery of the word will cause its use to decline, or whether rap will find ingenious ways to reclaim it.

Black nationalism seeped into the mainstream when Hulu debuted its comedy series “ Woke ” in 2020.

The rise of “ woke ” coincided with the rising social awareness of activist movements like Black Voters Matter.

In 2022, Elon Musk posted a tweet mocking a trove of #Stay Woke T-shirts he discovered.

[keɪk] noun. An item of sweet food, baked and often decorated. Hip-hop has always celebrated booties and invented various euphemisms to refer to them. But this has typically been from the point of view of a male rapper’s sexual fantasies (Sir Mix-a-Lot basically made a career of this). Part of what’s notable about the abundant references to “cake” in hip-hop lyrics of the last decade is how often female rappers are the ones behind the mic. As the culture has adopted a sexual politic that centers female pleasure, and women have become a bigger force in the genre, they have not only taken ownership of their sexuality; they’ve taken back raunch.

Megan Thee Stallion flaunts her body-ody-ody-ody-ody on “Saturday Night Live.”

Songs like Cardi B’s “WAP,” Ice Spice’s “Munch (Feelin’ U)” and Sexyy Red’s “Pound Town” represent female rappers reclaiming raunch.

In “Girls in the Hood,” Megan Thee Stallion raps, “He call me Patty Cake ’cause the way that ass shake.” Women’s erotic imagination is at the fore in these songs, not men’s, as in “Trollz,” in which Nicki Minaj boasts, “Just put it in his face, all this cake, he wanted a taste.” (Or Rihanna’s simply rapping, “Cake, cake, cake, cake, cake.”) Another variant of this usage is “caked up,” meaning having well-developed gluteal muscles.

“Heard in three weeks, she sniffed a whole half a cake up” — Notorious B.I.G., “Ten Crack Commandments” (1997)

Jay-Z released “Big Pimpin” in 2000, the same year as Sisqó’s “Thong Song.” A bootyful coincidence?

“ Cake ” is also used to refer to copious amounts of money or cocaine. E.g., “Stackin’ the cake makes rainy days sunny” — Shaq, “Legal Money” (1996)

The actor Al Pacino as the drug lord Tony Montana in the 1983 film “Scarface,” with mounds of cocaine.

“ Cake , cake-cake, cake-cake, cake/500 million, I got a pound cake” — Jay-Z on Drake’s “Pound Cake/Paris Morton Music 2” (2013)

[waɪldɪŋ] adj. Not cultivated or domesticated; noun. Wild or mischievous behavior. Early definitions of this word, dating back to about 1525, referred to plants growing uncultivated in the wild. In hip-hop’s lexicon, a “wildstyle” referred to an intricate form of graffiti, and in the mid-1980s, “wildin’” became one of many ways to describe someone acting in an uninhibited or reckless manner. Musical evidence of wildin’ surfaces as early as 1988 in Ice-T’s “Radio Suckers” (“Gangs illin’, wildin’ and killin’/Hustlers on a roll, like they got a million”). Sometimes it took a different spelling, as per the debut single from Public Enemy’s former D.J., Terminator X, “Buck Whylin’.” But uninhibited Blackness has always inspired fear in mainstream America, and so this word also came to be used against the community that created it.

The rapper Chuck D appeared in the Public Enemy D.J. Terminator X’s video for “Buck Whylin ’” (1991).

“Father of all stylin’, I be wildin’ on wax” — Jeru the Damaja, “D. Original” (1994)

“ Wild Style” (1982) is regarded as the first hip-hop film.

“Be my queen if you know what I mean and let us do the wild thing ” — Tone Loc, “Wild Thing” (1988)

Tonya Harding skated to Tone Loc’s “ Wild Thing ” in the 1991 U.S. figure-skating championships, winning first place.

MTV introduced Nick Cannon’s “ Wild ’N Out,” an improv comedy show, in 2005.

During the 1989 Central Park rape case, which resulted in the wrongful convictions of five Black and Latino teenagers, fear-mongering headlines used the word “wilding” to whip up white anxiety about out-of-control Black youth rampaging in the city. Senior detectives claimed that the Central Park Five suspects had used the word to describe their own actions to the police, but this account was questioned by the investigative reporter Barry Michael Cooper, who speculated that a detective may have misunderstood the suspects’ use of the phrase “doin’ the wild thing,” a lyric from the rapper Tone Loc’s 1988 single, “Wild Thing,” which they were reportedly singing while in the holding cell. In 1989, the Oxford English Dictionary added this definition: “The action or practice by a gang of youths of going on a protracted and violent rampage in a street, park or other public place, attacking or mugging people at random along the way.” Today the use of “wildin’” in hip-hop persists as a celebration of wildness, unruliness and boisterousness, a carefully calculated refusal of control. (See A$AP Rocky’s song “Wild for the Night”: “Wilding for the night, [expletive] being polite, boy.”)

Donald Trump’s infamous full-page ad calling for the death penalty for “roving bands of wild criminals” was obviously directed at the teenagers falsely accused in the 1989 Central Park rape case.

“Now I’m four, five seconds from wildin’ /And we got three more days ’til Friday” — Rihanna, “FourFiveSeconds” (2015)

Wildin’ all around the world.

[goʊst] verb. To leave or escape suddenly and discreetly; to disappear. The word “ghost,” used as a noun, derived from the Old English gast , meaning the disembodied spirit of a dead person, began to take on a new meaning in the 1980s: to depart from an area, or “get ghost.” One of the earliest recorded uses of “ghost” in this sense dates back to a 1991 collaboration between the hip-hop duos 3rd Bass and Nice & Smooth on the song “Microphone Techniques”: “Greg Nice, I’m outta here, ghost!” (A related term with a similar definition, “Swayze,” stemmed from the actor Patrick Swayze’s starring role in Hollywood’s 1990 romantic fantasy “Ghost.”)

“Greg Nice, I’m outta here, ghost !” — 3rd Bass and Nice & Smooth, “Microphone Techniques” (1991)

“So here's the news, I'm ghost , I'm outta here, long gone” — Guy, featuring Heavy D, “Do Me Right” (1991)

Remember when ghosting was friendly?

A related term with a similar definition, “Swayze,” stemmed from the actor Patrick Swayze’s “ Ghost .”

Notorious B.I.G. referenced the film “ Ghost ” on his featured verse on 2Pac’s “Runnin’ (Dying to Live)”: “When he drop, take his Glock and I’m Swayze.”

In its original appearance, “ghost” was an example of the voracious, playful curiosity at the heart of Black vernacular and hip-hop lingo. Like that lingo itself, the phrase pulled from distinct parts of American culture to make something new, eventually giving us a new way to speak about our lives. More recently, driven by social media, “ghosting” has evolved to describe the disappearance of acquaintances or love interests who cut off all communication. It’s part of the lingua franca of modern dating in the Tinder/Bumble era.

TikTok’s @jseay_ (the actor Jared Seay) doles out relationship advice on being ghosted .

Adidas released semi-see-through X Ghosted soccer cleats in 2020.

Read 3:17 AM

“The Office,” Season 4, Episode 10.

Rolls-Royce Motor Cars unveiled its newest luxury Ghost model in 2009.

Badu: Matt Jelonek/Getty Images. ‘‘Dope’’ poster: Open Road Films. Dopey: Disney. Car: Rolls-Royce. Garvey: George Rinhart/Corbis, via Getty Images. Musk: Screen grab from Twitter. Megan Thee Stallion: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images and S.N.L. Newspaper clippings: Daily News. Notorious B.I.G.: Raymond Boyd/Getty Images. OutKast: Rick Diamond/WireImage/Getty Images. Seay: Screen grab from TikTok. Simpson: Fox. Spivey: Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy. Sneaker: Adidas. Stay Woke Florida: ZUMA Press, Inc./Alamy Live News, via Associated Press. Video stills: Screen grabs from YouTube. “Wild ’N Out’’ poster: MTV. “Woke” poster: Hulu. Miles Marshall Lewis is a Harlem-based writer who spent his formative years in the Bronx, the birthplace of hip-hop culture. His most recent book, published in 2021 by St. Martin’s Press, is a cultural biography on the Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper Kendrick Lamar. Lewis lived in Paris for seven years during the 2000s, where he heard firsthand how American rap music affects speech on a global level. Design and produced by Antonio De Luca and Sean Catangui.

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noun as in something that holds up structure

Strongest match

Strong matches

• cornerstone
• reinforcement
• substructure
• sustentation
• underpinning

noun as in help, approval

Strongest matches

• encouragement
• championship
• furtherance
• moral support

noun as in food, money, possessions for staying alive

• responsibility
• alimentation
• maintenance
• necessities
• subsistence

verb as in hold up

Weak matches

• be a foundation for
• keep from falling

verb as in take care of, provide for

• be a source of strength
• earn one's keep
• give a leg up
• keep an eye on
• make a living
• pay expenses of
• pick up the check
• put up money for

verb as in defend, advocate belief

• countenance
• substantiate
• boost morale
• go along with
• go to bat for
• put forward
• rally round
• stand behind
• stand up for
• stick up for
• take one's side
• take the part of
• throw in one's lot with
• throw in with

verb as in endure

• put up with
• stay the course
• stick it out

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Example sentences.

A few of the 3DS variation that were, until recently, supported by Nintendo.

In the playoffs, calls have been more likely to get the “support” ruling than “stands,” indicating slightly more confident review decisions.

It may, Cloudflare has a blog post that shares how you can check your site support.

That’s 4 percentage points higher than the 68 percent who supported Hillary Clinton in 2016.

As Andrew Keatts has reported, Mayor Kevin Faulconer and the Housing Commission advocated for state and federal officials to support hotel purchases to house homeless people after the city converted the Convention Center into a shelter.

“I do not support gay marriages being recognized in Florida,” he wrote Andrew Walther of Sanford.

If the Israel model ban were directed towards disordered eating, Ravin says she would support it whole-heartedly.

In October, he traveled to Denver with Fry to support his work with LGBT rights organization The Matthew Sheppard Foundation.

A Republican candidate hoping to win red state support could find a worse team to root for than one from Dallas.

Both are considered marginal figures in the House GOP caucus and have no real base of support for their respective bids.

His enemies persistently insinuated that he was really returning to Spain to support the clericals actively.

Several able speakers had made long addresses in support of the bill when one Mr. Morrisett, from Monroe, took the floor.

Martini was on his mission to Vienna; but another valet was put into the chariot to support the Duke.

A double detachment of soldiers was already there, with orders to support him in case of resistance.

Danger threatened from two of them: Mr Bellamy had not afforded the support which he had promised.

Related Words

Words related to support are not direct synonyms, but are associated with the word support . Browse related words to learn more about word associations.

verb as in assist, help in wrongdoing

noun as in help

• endorsement

noun as in masonry mass

• jutting piece

verb as in perform service

• convenience

Viewing 5 / 305 related words

When To Use

What are other ways to say  support .

To support is to hold up or add strength to, literally or figuratively: The columns support the roof. To maintain is to support so as to preserve intact: to maintain an attitude of defiance. To sustain , a rather elevated word, suggests completeness and adequacy in supporting: The court sustained his claim. Uphold applies especially to supporting or backing another, as in a statement, opinion, or belief: to uphold the rights of a minority.

On this page you'll find 631 synonyms, antonyms, and words related to support, such as: backing, abutment, agency, back, base, and bed.

From Roget's 21st Century Thesaurus, Third Edition Copyright © 2013 by the Philip Lief Group.

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Definition of prize

 (Entry 1 of 5)

Definition of prize  (Entry 2 of 5)

Definition of prize  (Entry 3 of 5)

transitive verb

Definition of prize  (Entry 4 of 5)

Definition of prize  (Entry 5 of 5)

• blue-ribbon
• bonny [ chiefly British ]
• bonnie
• boss [ slang ]
• cool [ slang ]
• crackerjack
• dope [ slang ]
• down [ slang ]
• fantabulous [ slang ]
• first-class
• first-string
• gangbusters
• gangbuster
• gilt-edge
• gone [ slang ]
• hype [ slang ]
• marvellous
• No. 1
• out-of-sight [ slang ]
• par excellence
• peachy keen
• phat [ slang ]
• primo [ slang ]
• prizewinning
• radical [ slang ]
• righteous [ slang ]
• sensational
• superlative
• top-of-the-line
• topping [ chiefly British ]
• unsurpassed
• wizard [ chiefly British ]

appreciate , value , prize , treasure , cherish mean to hold in high estimation.

appreciate often connotes sufficient understanding to enjoy or admire a thing's excellence.

value implies rating a thing highly for its intrinsic worth.

prize implies taking a deep pride in something one possesses.

treasure emphasizes jealously safeguarding something considered precious.

cherish implies a special love and care for something.

spoil , plunder , booty , prize , loot mean something taken from another by force or craft.

spoil , more commonly spoils , applies to what belongs by right or custom to the victor in war or political contest.

plunder applies to what is taken not only in war but in robbery, banditry, grafting, or swindling.

booty implies plunder to be shared among confederates.

prize applies to spoils captured on the high seas or territorial waters of the enemy.

loot applies especially to what is taken from victims of a catastrophe.

Examples of prize in a Sentence

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'prize.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Middle English pris prize, price — more at price entry 1

Middle English prisen , from Anglo-French priser, preiser to appraise, esteem, from Late Latin pretiare , from Latin pretium price, value — more at price entry 1

Middle English prise , from Anglo-French, taking, seizure, from prendre to take, from Latin prehendere — more at get

prize lever

14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1

1739, in the meaning defined at sense 1a

1574, in the meaning defined above

Phrases Containing prize

• consolation prize
• grand prize
• prize - giving
• prize money

Dictionary Entries Near prize

prize court

Cite this Entry

“Prize.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prize. Accessed 5 Jul. 2024.

Kids Definition

Kids definition of prize.

Kids Definition of prize  (Entry 2 of 5)

Kids Definition of prize  (Entry 3 of 5)

Kids Definition of prize  (Entry 4 of 5)

Kids Definition of prize  (Entry 5 of 5)

Middle English pris "prize, price, value," from early French pris (same meaning), from Latin pretium "price, money" — related to price

Middle English prisen "to appraise, esteem," from early French prisier (same meaning), from Latin pretiare (same meaning), from earlier pretium (noun) "price, value"

Middle English prise "something taken by force or threat," from early French prise "taking, seizure," from prendre "to take," from Latin prehendere "to take"

Legal Definition

Legal definition of prize, more from merriam-webster on prize.

Nglish: Translation of prize for Spanish Speakers

Britannica English: Translation of prize for Arabic Speakers

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Social Media Broke Slang. Now We All Speak Phone.

The irony: Online is where we most need the identity cues that idiosyncratic language used to provide.

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It was on the social-media platform some call X that I first encountered the slang term tea , an expression that originated in Black drag culture to mean “ gossip ” or “secret biographical information”—as in, “She said she didn’t get fillers, but her boyfriend spilled the tea.” Tea was common parlance on Twitter by at least the Trump administration. At some point in the past year, however, people started saying body tea, a noun phrase meaning “physical hotness.” This usage was apparently derived from a misreading of the influencer Queen Opp’s remark : “Her body tea, she’s super thick, she’s super pretty.” Queen Opp elided the verb to be from a declarative clause, which viewers seem to have misinterpreted, taking “her body [is] tea” to mean “[she has] body tea.” Body tea as a noun has since become so popular that it threatens to eclipse the original usage. An expression that once had a narrow meaning within a specific subculture has drifted toward meaning “good”—a flattening that is the final destination of all slang terms that spread too far too fast.

As a middle-aged heterosexual, I shouldn’t know any of this stuff. While I think of myself as cool and relevant, objectively there is no reason I should understand any slang term that originated after the final season of Workaholics . But I live under unnatural conditions—conditions dictated by social media and its delivery system, the smartphone. Like most internet users with access to X, Instagram, TikTok, and so forth, I routinely spend two to 22 hours a day competing in a metered popularity contest that rewards, among other things, whoever can deviate the furthest from standard English and still be understood. If the slang that emerges from these deviations excludes anyone, it should exclude me. And yet I comprehend it with terrifying clarity.

Because social media gives me access to conversations among people of all ages, from every place and subculture, I am exposed to a virtual fire hose of slang. The discourse that produces new slang is not only publicly available online, but also amplified based on its ability to attract attention from outside its original context. We all stand before this fire hose now, and some of it gets in our mouths. The situation has created a language crisis, in which Americans of all types and backgrounds use expressions of every provenance, destroying the power of slang to perform its basic function: to signal membership in a group.

The incentives imposed by social media to develop and use slang are, of course, not new. Middle schools, skate parks, barracks, gay bars, locker rooms, and various music scenes have operated on the slang-for-esteem model for generations. But these milieus differ from social media in one crucial way: The wrong people cannot get in. In real life, I do not learn how teenagers talk, because whenever I drift by, they fall silent and glare at me. On social media, there is no such exclusion. Thirty-five-year-olds hear the slang of teenagers, college students are privy to the language of the urban underclass, and advertising consultants learn how to talk like self-diagnosed anxiety shut-ins. As a result, how someone talks is no longer a reliable indicator of where they’re coming from. The irony is that social media—the disembodied online spaces where what we post becomes the entirety of who we are—is where we most need the identity cues that slang used to provide.

These cues are an essential part of life offline, if only at a subconscious level. If I’m in a crowd and someone addresses us collectively, I immediately start assessing that person’s background and orientation based on whether they say “ladies and gentlemen,” “you guys,” or “y’all.” These assessments depend on a whole mess of associations and shifting cultural currents of which I am imperfectly but also instinctively aware—associations that are felt more than considered but nonetheless specific and up-to-date.

Read: The most fun way to learn a language

The valence of any given expression is constantly changing—for instance, the dramatic shift since 2008 in what kind of person says “folks.” Folks was a word used almost exclusively by older rural people until the Obama administration, when the president used it relentlessly . Folks subsequently became so popular with politicians, HR supervisors, and others who professionally reassure the hoi polloi that it is now, perversely, one of the strongest signs of membership in the professional managerial class. When Obama said “folks,” he sent the message that, although he was a graduate of Harvard Law School, a senator, and the kind of hyper-ambitious professional who becomes a candidate for president, he was also a salt-of-the-earth type who spoke the language of farmers and Dolly Parton. He was folksy .

One term for this kind of implied message is exformation . The word has different definitions in different fields, but we will define it for our purposes as David Foster Wallace did in a July 1998 essay for Harper’s Magazine : as information conveyed about the speaker that is not explicit in the content of the speech.

Exformation communicated by slang is a way for strangers to efficiently understand whom they are talking with and where they’re from, based on whether they use double negatives or say “man” versus “bro,” “that rules” versus “that owns,” “pot” versus “weed,” “cool” versus “lit.” Exformation is also a way to announce your identification with other people. When I see old friends from whom I have been separated by time and distance greater than I imagined I could bear, and I say, “What’s up, sluts?,” I could be taken to mean, in the literal sense, that I am greeting them and condemning their past sexual behavior. But at the level of exformation, I am conveying a whole parcel of unspoken ideas about our relationship, our shared cultural consumption , and my perspective on it. The basic premise of exformation is that there’s what you say and there’s how you say it, and they are in scope and function as the ground is to the sky.

Read: Why AI doesn’t get slang

Social media, however, has standardized our language to the point that exformation has become endangered. For the past 10 years, the English language’s wealth of previously exformative, subcultural slang has dispersed into a single, universal argot that is simply Phone. Hence the destruction of tea as a useful expression. It used to be a fun word that implied knowledge of a whole social realm to which most of us are not privy, and then it became a built-in Twitter GIF that told you only that the person using it knew what the GIF button did. Now anyone who uses tea in conversation might give you information—but exformatively, all they’re telling you about themselves is that they’ve been racking up a lot of screen time.

In the absence of distinctive subcultural expressions, social media has become full of empty slang. The locution the way , used at the beginning of a declarative statement—for example, “the way I never thought I would be 46”—makes that statement less formal and therefore less intense but otherwise adds no informative or exformative meaning. The comparably empty “ It’s giving [noun/adjective]” at least turns a sentence fragment into a complete thought—allowing me to respond to a photo of the Tesla Cybertruck with “It’s giving DeLorean” instead of simply blurting out “DeLorean!” like a caveman—but in a potentially insidious way that encourages us to think in vague, unspecified connections, at the level of vibes .

Read: The origin of vibes

Vibes , it seems to me, is the worst offender in the category of slang expressions that help us think less instead of more, a cliché that releases the pressure on language and keeps vaporous thoughts from coalescing into anything solid at all. Everyone online says “vibes” now —college students and corporate bureaucrats and The New York Times (and The Atlantic !) alike.

This mass outbreak of exformation-free slang is a problem because it deprives people of a previously reliable way to know whom they’re talking with and how to treat them. If I hear someone make a remark about the first Velvet Underground album with which I strongly disagree, I am more likely to respond kindly if I know they come from a background different from my own. If a stranger on Twitter says that Nico had pitch problems, I am much more likely to tear into them if they speak the way I do, because I assume they have the cultural experiences, education, and resources that brought me to my own extremely correct opinions. When everyone talks like me, I make the mistake of believing that everyone is like me—and therefore falls into the category of people whom I cut the least slack.

The slangs that I grew up with—the skater expressions I adopted even though I never ollied , the Spanish lingo we learned from Blood In, Blood Out and were just worldly enough to realize we shouldn’t use, the East Coast and SoCal expressions that kept new kids at our school from successfully buying drugs—all these clues I spent years learning to interpret have burned up in the wildfire spread of Phone. The crisis in American slang is that we grasp what everyone is saying so well that we think we know one another, when in fact we understand less and less.