Virtuous English AcademyAbstract Concepts — B2 English Vocabulary
This B2 vocabulary list gathers 50 upper-intermediate English words about abstract concepts — big ideas you cannot touch or see. Every word comes with a simple definition, its British-English pronunciation and a natural example sentence, so you learn each one in real context. When you are ready, open the flashcards to practise and remember them for good.
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Using abstract concepts words in English
Abstract nouns are what make academic writing sound academic, and this page is about how they are built. Four suffixes do nearly all the work — -ation, -ity, -ance and -ism — and recognising them lets you convert freely between a verb, an adjective and a noun. The page also covers the British double-l in tranquillity and one pronunciation that catches almost everyone: prestige.
What to watch out for
Four suffixes build most abstract nouns
-ation comes from verbs: liberate gives liberation. -ity comes from adjectives: valid gives validity, stable gives stability. -ance or -ence comes from either: abundant gives abundance, elegant gives elegance. And -ism names a belief or system: optimism, pessimism. Once the pattern is visible, unfamiliar words become decodable.
Prestige keeps a French sound
Prestige ends with the sound in the middle of measure, not with a hard j: roughly pres-TEEZH. The adjective prestigious shifts back to an English -jus ending. The same French sound survives in genre, beige and camouflage. It is one of the small set of sounds that mark a word as a recent borrowing.
British tranquillity doubles the l
British English writes tranquillity and tranquil, doubling the l in the longer form; American English writes tranquility. The same British doubling appears in travelled, cancelled, labelled and marvellous. Note that self-reliance takes a hyphen, as most self- compounds do: self-esteem, self-aware, self-control.
Words learners mix up
Abstract nouns come in near-synonymous families, and the choice between members is where an argument gains or loses precision. Three families matter most: words for order and its absence, words for power over others, and words for what is real.
Order, and its absence
| Word | What it actually means | In a sentence |
|---|---|---|
| stability | A state that resists change. Positive by default, and it says nothing about whether the state is good. | Political stability returned after the election. |
| tranquillity | Calm and quiet. About atmosphere and feeling rather than structure. | The tranquillity of the lake at dawn. |
| chaos | Complete disorder. Uncountable, and stronger than confusion — it implies no order remains at all. | The cancellation caused chaos at the airport. |
| discord | Disagreement between people, and in music a clash of notes. Formal. | Open discord within the cabinet. |
| confusion | Not knowing what is happening. A state of mind, where chaos is a state of affairs. | There was some confusion about the date. |
The pair to keep apart is chaos and confusion: chaos is out there in the world, confusion is in someone’s head, and a well-organised event can still leave its guests confused. Discord differs again by requiring people — a broken timetable cannot be discordant, only chaotic.
Power over other people
| Word | What it actually means | In a sentence |
|---|---|---|
| dominance | Being the strongest in a field. Descriptive, and often used of markets and sport with no criticism attached. | Their dominance in the sector lasted a decade. |
| supremacy | Being above all others, with a claim to rank rather than mere strength. Grander, and politically loaded. | The supremacy of parliament over the courts. |
| oppression | Prolonged unjust treatment by those in power. Always a condemnation. | Decades of oppression. |
| captivity | Being physically held. Concrete in what it describes, and used of animals as much as people. | Bred in captivity. |
| empowerment | The process of gaining control over one’s own life. The counterweight to the others on this list. | Economic empowerment for women. |
Only the first is safe as a neutral description. Supremacy now carries the shadow of the phrase it most often appears in, oppression is an accusation, and empowerment has been so heavily used in corporate and development writing that it needs a concrete example beside it to mean anything.
What is real, and what only appears so
| Word | What it actually means | In a sentence |
|---|---|---|
| authenticity | Being genuinely what it claims to be. Applies to objects, documents and, more loosely, to people. | Doubts about the authenticity of the letter. |
| validity | Being sound or well founded — of an argument, a claim or a ticket. Not the same as being true. | The validity of the method has been questioned. |
| myth | A traditional story, or a widely believed falsehood. Both senses are common and they pull in opposite directions. | The myth that we use ten per cent of our brains. |
| ambiguity | Having more than one possible meaning. A property of the wording, not of the reader. | A useful ambiguity in the wording of the treaty. |
| deceit | Deliberate misleading. Requires an intention, which is what separates it from error. | A campaign built on deceit. |
In logic validity is about the form of an argument, so a valid argument can have a false conclusion if its premises are false — which is why a marker will not accept valid as a synonym for true. And ambiguity is not vagueness: an ambiguous sentence has two clear meanings, a vague one has no sharp meaning at all.
Collocations that sound natural
Abstract nouns are the part of English where writers most often invent a verb that does not fit. These are the standard pairings, and most of them are worth learning as whole phrases.
prestige
confer prestigeattach prestige toa loss of prestigeprestige value
Uncountable. Institutions confer it and people enjoy it; nobody makes or gets it. The adjective prestigious is far more frequent than the noun.
clarity
bring clarity toa lack of clarityfor the sake of clarityclarity of thought
Uncountable, and the standard fixed phrase in formal writing is for the sake of clarity, used to introduce a restatement.
uncertainty
a degree of uncertaintyconsiderable uncertaintyuncertainty aboutreduce uncertainty
Countable when it means specific unknowns — the uncertainties in the model — and uncountable as a general condition. It takes about or over, not of.
coincidence
by coincidencea mere coincidencesheer coincidenceit is no coincidence that
The frame it is no coincidence that is a standard rhetorical move: it asserts a causal link without having to demonstrate one, which is worth noticing in other people’s arguments.
restraint
exercise restraintshow restraintwithout restraintfinancial restraint
You exercise or show restraint. The plural restraints shifts sense entirely to external limits or physical ties, so keep it singular for the virtue.
significance
attach significance toof great significancestatistical significancethe significance of
Watch the technical trap: statistical significance means only that a result is unlikely to be chance, not that it is important — a small, uninteresting effect can be highly significant in that sense.
Formal, neutral or informal?
Abstract nouns sound neutral because they name concepts rather than things, and several on this page are not neutral at all. These are the ones that quietly take a position.
- ignoranceNegative · often read as insultingStrictly just a lack of knowledge, and used technically in phrases like ignorance of the law is no defence. But most readers hear an insult, so in careful writing unfamiliarity or lack of information avoids the fight.
- follyFormal · literaryFoolishness, especially costly foolishness with hindsight attached: the folly of the invasion. Elevated and slightly old-fashioned, so it lends weight to an argument and sounds odd in conversation.
- treacheryStrong · moralBetrayal of trust. Much stronger than disloyalty, with a whiff of the historical about it, and it is a serious accusation rather than a description of a broken promise.
- splendourFormal · admiringMagnificent appearance. British spelling keeps the -our; American writes splendor. It suits buildings and landscapes and sounds ironic when applied to small things.
- decencyNeutral · quietly moralBehaving properly towards others. Understated in a characteristically British way — common decency appeals to a standard the speaker assumes is shared, which is part of its rhetorical force.
- resignationTwo unrelated sensesLeaving a job, and calm acceptance of something unwelcome. The second is the abstract one on this page: an air of resignation. Nothing but context separates them.
- mightFormal · and a very common verbGreat power, as in military might. Rare as a noun and unmistakable when it appears, but it shares its form with the modal verb, so it needs a supporting adjective to be read correctly.
- gloryElevated · sometimes ironicGreat honour and renown, with religious and military histories behind it. In modern prose it often arrives with a touch of irony — basking in reflected glory — so plain use sounds deliberately grand.
Sentences to try
Four frames using abstract nouns. Try to rewrite each one using the verb or adjective instead.
- The validity of the results has been questioned.
- The region enjoyed decades of stability and relative prosperity.
- He values self-reliance above almost everything else.
- The garden was designed for tranquillity rather than display.
Questions about abstract concepts vocabulary
How do I turn a verb or adjective into an abstract noun?
Four suffixes cover most cases. Add -ation to a verb: liberate gives liberation, validate gives validation. Add -ity to an adjective: valid gives validity, stable gives stability, able gives ability. Add -ance or -ence, typically where the adjective ends in -ant or -ent: elegant gives elegance, abundant gives abundance. Add -ism for a belief or system: optimism, realism. Plain adjectives can also take -ness, which is the most freely available of all.
How do you pronounce "prestige"?
The final sound is the soft zh heard in the middle of measure, vision and treasure, so the word is roughly pres-TEEZH with the stress on the second syllable. It is not pronounced with a hard j as in bridge. The adjective prestigious, by contrast, has anglicised fully and ends with an ordinary -jus sound. The same French zh survives in genre, beige, collage and camouflage.
Is it "tranquillity" or "tranquility"?
British English writes tranquillity with a double l, alongside tranquil and tranquilliser. American English writes tranquility and tranquilizer with one. This reflects a wider rule: British English doubles a final l before a suffix regardless of stress, giving travelled, cancelled, labelled, modelling and marvellous, where American English keeps a single l. The main British exceptions run the other way, as in fulfil and skilful, which take one l where American English takes two.