subjective
- 01 B2 Upper Intermediate
adj.based on your own feelings and opinions rather than on facts.
adj.pertaining to or characteristic of an individual's personal beliefs, feelings, or tastes rather than external facts.
Simple“The way we judge art is very subjective because everyone has different tastes.”
In context“The review was highly subjective, focusing more on the critic's personal dislike of the lead actor than on the technical merits of the film.”
- 02 C1 Advanced
adj.describing a feeling or experience that happens inside your mind and cannot be seen by others.
adj.relating to the internal mental experience of a subject as opposed to the external world of objects.
Simple“Pain is a subjective experience because only the person feeling it knows how much it hurts.”
In context“Phenomenology explores the subjective nature of consciousness, prioritising the individual's lived experience over abstract scientific data.”
Synonyms - 03 C2 Proficiency
adj.relating to the subject of a sentence (the person or thing doing the action).
adj.relating to the grammatical subject or the nominative case.
Simple“In the sentence 'I saw him', the word 'I' is in the subjective case.”
In context“The student struggled to distinguish between subjective and objective pronouns when constructing complex relative clauses.”
UsageIn modern linguistics, 'nominative' is more common than 'subjective' for this sense.
SynonymsnominativeAntonyms - 04 C2 Proficiency
n.the form of a noun or pronoun used when it is the subject of a verb.
n.the nominative case or a word in that case.
Simple“The teacher explained that 'he' is the subjective and 'him' is the objective.”
In context“The analysis of the text required identifying every instance where the subjective was used to emphasise the agency of the protagonist.”
SynonymsnominativeAntonyms
Usage expenditure subjective · highly subjective · subjective experience
“She says “objective evidence” about cell towers was turned into “subjective evidence” by expert witness Dr Matthew Sorell.”
“Looking properly has involved going through 11,000 summaries of scientific papers and working through the evidence on biphasic sleep across health, performance, and the subjective experience of shift workers.”
From subject + -ive.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.