contextnoun [ C ]
uk/ˈkɒn.tekst/us/ˈkɑːn.tekst/context noun [ C ] (CAUSE OF EVENT)
B2 the situation within which something exists or happens, and that can help explain it:
It is important to see all the fighting and bloodshed in his plays in historical context.
This small battle is very important in the context of Scottish history.
More examples
- To understand this issue, it must first be situated in its context.
- The production is deliberately styleless, and this takes the play out of its historical context.
- What was the context you found the word in?
- He thinks smacking is OK in the context of a happy family.
- His remarks were very tasteless in the context of a memorial service.
Thesaurus: synonyms and related words
Linking and relating
- affiliated
- AL
- appertain to sth
- applicable
- apply
- associate
- associated
- bond
- concern
- connection
- interconnected
- interplay
- interrelate
- interrelationship
- kindred
- tar sb with the same brush idiom
- the same/that goes for sb/sth idiom
- tie (sth) in
- tie-in
- tie-up
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You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:
Regarding and concerning
context noun [ C ] (LANGUAGE)
C1 the text or speech that comes immediately before and after a particular phrase or piece of text and helps to explain its meaning:
In this exercise, a word is blanked out and you have to guess what it is by looking at the context.
out of context
If words are used out of context, only a small separate part of what was originally said or written is reported, with the result that their meaning is not clear or is not understood:
The reporter took my remarks completely out of context.
Thesaurus: synonyms and related words
Linguistic terms & linguistic style
- affricate
- allophone
- anaphor
- anaphora
- anaphoric
- double entendre
- ellipsis
- idiomatic
- irregular
- lexicology
- linguistic
- litotes
- neurolinguistics
- parallelism
- philology
- portmanteau word
- semantic
- semiotics
- stylistics
- tone language
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