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say it: KER-fuhl
careful is an adjective meaning "exercising caution or showing care or attention". It carries 5 recorded senses.
exercising caution or showing care or attention
“they were careful when crossing the busy street”
“be careful to keep her shoes clean”
“did very careful research”
“careful art restorers”
“careful of the rights of others”
“careful about one's behavior”
unhurried and with care and dignity
“walking at the same measured pace”
“with all deliberate speed”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for careful come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.