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impression

nounverbcommon in dialogue

  • //ɪmˈpɹɛʃn̩//

The indentation or depression made by the pressure of one object on or into another.

noun

  1. 1

    The indentation or depression made by the pressure of one object on or into another.

    His head made an impression on the pillow.

  2. 2

    The overall effect of something, e.g., on a person.

    He tried to make a good impression on his parents.

    Their empires, triumphs, conquests, and projects, have left little impression behind them, notwithstanding the attention they once attracted, and the violent convulsions which they caused in the state of the world.

    The stories did not seem to me to touch life. […] They left me with the impression of a well-delivered stereopticon lecture, with characters about as life-like as the shadows on the screen, and whisking on and off, at the mercy of the operator.

    Though most of the cases here cover European encounters with non-Europeans, it is not the intention of the book to give the impression that genocide is a function of European colonialism and imperialism alone.

  3. 3

    A vague recalling of an event, a belief.

    I have the impression that he's already left for Paris.

  4. 4

    An impersonation, an imitation of the mannerisms of another person.

  5. 5

    An outward appearance.

  6. 6

    A performance metric representing an instance where a post or ad is shown once.

    Publishers are paid for each ad impression their site generates.

  7. 7

    The first coat of colour, such as the priming in house-painting etc.

  8. 8

    A print on paper from a wood block, metal plate, etc.

  9. 9

    The vivid perception of something as it is experienced, in contrast to ideas or thoughts drawn from memory or the imagination.

  10. 10

    set of copies of a publication printed at one time having the same content, layout, pagination, etc.

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₁én Proto-Italic *en Proto-Italic *en- Latin in- Proto-Indo-European *per-? Proto-Indo-European *pres-der. Proto-Italic *pres- Latin premō Latin imprimō Proto-Indo-European *-tis Proto-Indo-European *-Hō Proto-Indo-European *-tiHō Proto-Italic *-tiō Latin -tiō Latin impressiōder. Old French impressionder. English impression From Old French impression, from Latin impressio. Equivalent to impress + -ion.

verb

  1. 1

    To manipulate a blank key within a lock so as to mark it with impressions of the shape of the lock, which facilitates creation of a duplicate key.

    The trick in impressioning a key is to remove only a small amount of the blank, by filing or cutting, from the pin positions where impressions have been left.

Forms

plural
impressions
past tense
impressioned
past participle
impressioned
present participle
impressioning
third person singular
impressions
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).