Skip to content
ARCHIEENGLISH
LearnPlayWordsRanking
  • Learn
  • Play
  • Words
  • Ranking
  • Mine
← Vocabulary

soothing

UK/ˈsuːðɪŋ/US/ˈsuːðɪŋ/
adjectiveB2Common in everyday speech and writing · #5,614 of 15,258leans spoken

Soothing means gentle enough to calm you. A soothing voice, soothing music, soothing cream.

It works on people and on symptoms alike — a soothing voice and a soothing lotion do the same job in different places. It implies gradual comfort rather than a cure. Note that soothing is much commoner than the verb soothe it comes from; and that soothing music has a real measurable effect on heart rate, which is why hospitals and dentists play it.

Definitions of soothing

  1. 1adjectivesoothingGentle enough to calm you.B2

    “She rubbed a soothing cream onto her sunburnt shoulders.”

soothing is a quality of calming.

Practised in Sounds & Noises, Texture & Touch

Practise this word

soothing in the wild

  • Research from the Social Issues Research Centre found that people performing construction work found tea "both soothing and stimulating".

    Builder's tea

  • In Woody Guthrie's 1940 song "Tom Joad" from the album Dust Bowl Ballads, Grandpa Joad is given soothing syrup before he dies.

    Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup

  • The colors of this family are usually described as soothing, calming, and nostalgic.

    Pastel (color)

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.