presence

UK/ˈpɹɛzəns/US/ˈpɹɛzəns/

nounB22 meanings Very common — you will meet it every day · #1,476 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: presences

Presence is the fact of being somewhere — or an impressive manner that fills a room. The same word does both.

The plain sense is attendance, so your presence is requested and a police presence means officers on the ground. The second sense is about personality, since somebody with presence is noticed the moment they arrive, and stage presence is what performers are said to have. There is a formal phrase, in the presence of, meaning while somebody was there. Its opposite, absence, has its own proverb about the heart growing fonder.

Definitions of presence

1nounpresenceThe state of being in a particular place.B2~92%
“His presence at the meeting was noted.”
2nounimpressiveAn impressive quality that draws attention.B2~8%
“She has real presence on stage.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 25 sentences found in the wild and placed 25 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Where it comes from

Latin
praesentia — a being present
Old French
presence
English, today
presence

Through Old French presence, from Latin praesentia (“a being present”), from praesentem. Displaced native andweardnes.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 8 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

presence in the wild

Reformed Christians believe in a real spiritual presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
Eucharist
The title came from the strong presence the group felt as they worked together.
Presence (album)
A 2024 study in the Journal of Economic History linked the presence of proxeny arrangements to increases in trade flows.
Proxeny
Christian democracy of the type found in Europe never gained a strong presence in Australia.
Christian politics in Australia
With the Umayyad conquest of Hispania in the 8th century there was a notable Moorish presence in art specially in Southern Iberia.
Spanish art

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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.

Definitions of presence

1nounpresenceThe state of being in a particular place.B2~92%

“His presence at the meeting was noted.”

2nounimpressiveAn impressive quality that draws attention.B2~8%

“She has real presence on stage.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 25 sentences found in the wild and placed 25 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.