Meaning of important in English

important

adjective

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/ɪmˈpɔː.tənt/ us

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/ɪmˈpɔːr.tənt/

necessary or of great value:

I think his career is more important to him than I am.

It's important for children to learn to get on with each other.

The important thing is to keep the heat low or the sugar will burn.

He's not amazingly handsome, but he's nice and that's more important.

Opposite

unimportant

having great effect or influence:

He was one of the most important writers of that period.

an important person/decision

Thesaurus: synonyms, antonyms, and examples

having great effect or influence

importantIt was one of the most important legal cases of the century.
bigThis is a big match tonight - if we lose, we won't be in the playoffs.
majorThis is a major decision so we'd better get it right.
significantDid he make any significant changes to my suggestions?

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More examples

I've lost a file containing a lot of important documents.
It's important for children to get a good education.
He always leaves important decisions to his wife.
I have to be in London on Friday for an important meeting.
Fresh fruit and vegetables form an important part of a healthy diet.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Very important or urgent

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Related word

importantly

(Definition of important from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

important | American Dictionary

important

adjective

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/ɪmˈpɔr·tənt/

of great value, meaning, or effect:

an important discovery

[ + that clause ] It’s important that you tell the doctor all your symptoms.

Important also means having great influence:

an important modern artist

importance

noun [ U ] us

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/ɪmˈpɔr·təns/

He stressed the importance of fruits and vegetables in the diet.

importantly

adverb us

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/ɪmˈpɔr·tənt·li/

She has a pleasant personality, but more importantly, she is well qualified for the job.

(Definition of important from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of important

important

An important part of planning slurry utilization and management system is estimating the amount of nutrients available for land application.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The results of this paper can be important for the study of the behavior of laboratory and space plasmas, and also for diagnostic purposes.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

More examples Fewer examples

Ownership of draught cattle is an important qualitative indicator of property size.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

A second, perhaps more important reason, is that qualitative insights can be obtained.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The introduction sets out the background and methodology of the research and repeats some of the important caveats about qualitative attitude research.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Yet, soil fertility will be the most important constraint for organic rice production.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Further investigation is required, because the issues are too important for simply assuming that persistence and intractability necessarily imply an organic genesis.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

This phonetic aspect is the main important difference between the two cases for other reasons as well.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

For female pupils in this group this is slightly less important, but "fitting in to the group" is an additional factor for them.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

These proscriptions, while useful in economics, may obfuscate important psychological phenomena.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Thus, it is important that explicit processes be developed to allow confidential data to be used, while protecting its confidentiality.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

I think the ascetic world reinforced my feeling that they were important.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Second, and more important, the forecasting of events is much easier in terms of distal than proximal representations.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

At the level of the situation model, it is important to maintain separate representations for each participant.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Although various internal representations are an important type of representations, they are typically compressed, segmented, and distorted forms of the represented entity but not emulations.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

Translations of important

in Chinese (Traditional)

必需的, 重要的, 珍貴的…

Meaning of important in English

Related word

important | American Dictionary

importance

importantly

Examples of important

Translations of important

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