as in expression
a lexical item that has only one syllable
He answered all their questions with monosyllables like "yes" and "no."
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Recent Examples of monosyllable
And so, while the two talked at and around Andy Warhol and to each other, Warhol sat with his tiny dachshund, Archie Bunker, in his lap and snapped the reporters’ pictures with his new Polaroid camera, answering direct questions with shrugs or vague monosyllables.
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Stephen Birmingham, Town & Country, 10 Aug. 2023
Hearing this jab of monosyllables is like being poked in the eye.
—Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, 4 Aug. 2023
His surprise was expressed in a monosyllable.
—Roger Robinson, Outside Online, 21 Dec. 2021
But where the two Stegosaurus brothers speak in Jurassic monosyllables, Stegothesaurus has the gift of a bountiful vocabulary.
—Meghan Cox Gurdon, WSJ, 22 June 2018
The result is an idiom of great spareness and simplicity:
The words are short, mostly monosyllables.
—Gregory Hays, New York Times, 5 Dec. 2017
Original writer Derek Kolstad and director Chad Stahelski have returned for the sequel, alongside the taciturn Reeves, who brews up more of his Wickian magic while speaking infrequently and mostly in monosyllables.
—Katie Walsh, The Mercury News, 9 Feb. 2017
Still on the ground, Huete answers with monosyllables before using a cell phone to call his sister, who arrived at the scene soon after …
—James Hohmann, Washington Post, 26 May 2017
The title of Frantz is something else again, neither a piece of hand-holding nor an act of mild subversion, but a monosyllable with a gift for multitasking—and an index of the impacted richness that the film displays for roughly an hour.
—Leo Robson, Newsweek, 4 May 2017
Recent Examples of Synonyms for monosyllable
Noun
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His expression was a mixture of confusion and dejection.Dan Wiederer, Chicago Tribune, 29 Nov. 2024
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The man reacted with a stunned expression, looking in the direction of the waitress with anger before realizing that his family had orchestrated the joke.Yaakov Katz, Newsweek, 28 Nov. 2024
Noun
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The phrase encapsulates the unwavering hope of the Cuban people that their decades-long nightmare under Fidel Castro (and now his successors) will one day end because darkness eventually always yields to light.Carlos Aguilar, Variety, 19 Nov. 2024
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To make each show feel unique for her fans, Olivia and her team collaborated to create a new, city-specific phrase for her final outfit of every tour stop.Kristen Wisneski, Billboard, 19 Nov. 2024
Noun
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Get our free daily crossword puzzle, sudoku, word search and arcade games.Alyssa Bereznak, Los Angeles Times, 22 Nov. 2024
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From ‘no word for art’ to one of Indian Country’s biggest industries At the Heard Museum in Phoenix last March, artists unloaded beadwork and baskets, paintings, pottery and photography, jewelry, stone and wood sculptures, textiles and delicate works in glass.Debra Utacia Krol, The Arizona Republic, 22 Nov. 2024
Noun
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Important, too, was the morpheme a-, which referred to the mouth and, more broadly, to origins.Anvita Abbi, Scientific American, 16 May 2023
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Those words are made up of morphemes, small elements that change their meaning depending on how they are combined.Ian Austen, BostonGlobe.com, 22 Apr. 2023
Thesaurus Entries Near monosyllable
Cite this Entry
“Monosyllable.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/monosyllable. Accessed 2 Dec. 2024.
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