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fluent

UK/ˈfluːənt/US/ˈfluənt/
adjectiveB2+Common in everyday speech and writing · #7,814 of 15,258leans written

Fluent means speaking a language smoothly and easily. Fluent in French, fluent English, speak fluently.

It describes flow rather than perfection: a fluent speaker keeps going without hunting for words, and may still make mistakes. That is why fluent and accurate are separate things and why teaching aims at both. Fluent in is the usual construction. Note fluency; and that the word comes from the Latin for flowing, which also gives fluid, influence and affluent.

Definitions of fluent

  1. 1adjectivefluentSpeaking a language smoothly and easily.B2+

    “After living in Paris for years, she's now fluent in French.”

fluent is a quality of smooth speech.

Where it comes from

Latin fluens is the present participle of fluere, to flow. Fluid, influence, affluent and superfluous come from the same flowing.

  1. Latin

    fluens — flowing

  2. English, today

    fluent

Built from

  • fluō · Latin — to flow

From Latin fluens (“flowing”), present active participle of fluō (“to flow”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Sharper Adjectives

Practise this word

fluent in the wild

  • Damage to this region typically produces a form of receptive, fluent aphasia.

    Wernicke's area

  • Karuk is classified as severely endangered by UNESCO with only around 12 fluent native speakers of the language left.

    Karuk language

  • According to many highly educated members of the ASL Deaf community, the number of fluent ASL native signers is closer to the tens of millions.

    List of sign languages by number of native signers

  • All speakers are elderly, with a total of approximately 400 fluent speakers remaining.

    Yangkam language

  • Wukchumni, the last surviving dialect, had only one native or fluent speaker, Marie Wilcox (both native and fluent), who compiled a dictionary of the language.

    Tule–Kaweah Yokuts

1 / 2

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.

Related words

the fluō family

fluentsuperfluousfluentlyaffluent

fluent — used about once every 2,903 pages · #7,814 · point at the bar for the others

  • fluency