In a sentence
Six example sentences with universal, each labelled with its topic.
Every recorded tongue marks a difference between question and statement, and field researchers treat that pattern as a universal.
Philosophy
Researchers hunting a universal compared eighty languages and confirmed that all of them somehow distinguish speaker from listener.
Psychology
The parser assumed one universal, and it broke the first time it met a tongue without fixed word order.
Technology
Linguists proposed one universal after another, and each survived only until fieldwork found a language that ignored it.
Science
Nineteenth-century scholars hunted for a universal in grammar, hoping it would reveal the original tongue of humankind.
History
The translator argued that one universal, the way every language marks past events, makes any story tellable in any tongue.
Literature
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Found in these word lists
Found in 4 published word lists
- New General Service List (Browne et al. 2013)Authoritative
- General Service List (West 1953, Bauman/Culligan rev.)Authoritative
- GRE Word List 4700 (widely used study list)Recognized
- GregMat 960 GRE WordsRecognized
Each source is a published word list that contains universal. No exam board publishes an official GRE, GMAT or SAT list; GMAT words come from GRE lists and the Academic Word List.