Word Pronunciation & Dictionary

environment

/ɪnˈvaɪ.ɚn.mənt/

Word Rarity Uncommon

Frequency: 4.87 in modern English

Syllables: en-vi-ron-ment
IPA: /ɪnˈvaɪ.ɚn.mənt/

16

Scrabble Score

11

Letters

4

Syllables

8

Unique Chars

Meaning

noun

The surroundings of, and influences on, a particular item of interest.

noun

The natural world or ecosystem.

noun

All the elements that affect a system or its inputs and outputs.

noun

A particular political or social setting, arena or condition.

noun

The software or hardware existing on any particular computer system.

noun

The environment of a function at a point during the execution of a program is the set of identifiers in the function's scope and their bindings at that point.

noun

The set of variables and their values in a namespace that an operating system associates with a process.

Example Sentences

"What was seen from the top down, as a large environment with many difficult trade-offs, is instead seen from the bottom up--as 10 million microenvironments, each to be regulated in its own right. It is this inversion of perspective that distinguishes microgovernment from other kinds of regulation, and that accounts for its often-bizarre behavior."
"It is tempting to speculate about the incentives or compulsions that might explain why anyone would take to the skies in [the] basket [of a balloon]: […]; […]; or perhaps to muse on the irrelevance of the borders that separate nation states and keep people from understanding their shared environment."
"That program uses the Microsoft Windows environment."

Etymology

From Middle French environnement. Compare French environnement. By surface analysis, environ + -ment.

Origin

Source language: Middle French

Word Breakdown

Root: environnement

Regional Pronunciation

American English: /ɪnˈvaɪ.ɚn.mənt/
British English: /ɪnˈvaɪ.ɹə.mənt/

Inflected Forms

environments (plural)

Derived Forms

agroenvironment antienvironment bioenvironment cryoenvironment cyberenvironment ecoenvironment environmetrics geoenvironment hydroenvironment macroenvironment microenvironment multienvironment

Phrases

built environment desktop environment environmental storytelling environment division environment-friendly environment mapping environment variable hostile environment

Frequently Paired Words

environ environmentalism environmentalist

Synonyms

domain ecosystem surrounding umbworld environs surroundings surround

Questions

How do you pronounce environment?: The recorded pronunciation is /ɪnˈvaɪ.ɚn.mənt/.
What does environment mean?: The surroundings of, and influences on, a particular item of interest.
Where does environment come from?: It is traced to Middle French.

How to pronounce environment

Open the pronunciation page — Open the Speakur entry for “environment”.
Read the phonetic spelling — Read the IPA spelling (/ɪnˈvaɪ.ɚn.mənt/) so you know which sounds to aim for.
Play the audio — Click Play to hear reference audio for “environment”.
Repeat and practice — Say “environment” aloud, matching stress and vowels until it feels natural.