Meaning & use
experience
Last updated
Meanings
noununcountable
Practical knowledge or skill that you gain by doing a job or activity over time.
Grammar: No article or plural in this sense: five years of experience, not *an experience.
Patterns
- gain experience
- work experience
- years of experience
- experience in something
She has ten years of experience in pediatric nursing.
The job requires no previous experience.
nouncountable
Something that happens to you or that you take part in, which affects or teaches you.
Grammar: Takes an or an: a strange experience; plural experiences means several such events.
Patterns
- a strange/unforgettable experience
- have an experience
- a learning experience
Moving to a new country alone was a challenging experience.
The whole trip was an experience I will never forget.
verbtransitive
To live through an event or feel an emotion yourself.
Grammar: Takes an object naming the event or feeling: experience problems, experience growth.
Patterns
- experience a problem/loss/change
- experience something firsthand
The city experienced its heaviest snowfall in decades.
He experienced a sudden wave of relief.
Word forms
| plural | experiences |
|---|---|
| third person singular | experiences |
| past tense | experienced |
| past participle | experienced |
| -ing form | experiencing |
Common combinations
- work experience
- She spent a week doing work experience at a law firm.
- gain experience
- Volunteering abroad is a good way to gain experience.
- a learning experience
- Losing the final was a painful but valuable learning experience.
- firsthand experience
- She spoke from firsthand experience of running a small business.
- an experienced traveler
- An experienced traveler always keeps a change of clothes in hand luggage.
Synonyms and how they differ
Word family
- experienced adjective
- having gained skill or knowledge through experience
- inexperienced adjective
- lacking experience
- experiential adjective
- based on direct experience rather than theory
Commonly confused: experience or experiment?
experience vs experiment
An experiment is a scientific test; experience is what you live through or learn from.
Practice
Applicants need at least two years of ___ in customer service.
Choose one answer.
Accumulated skill is uncountable: years of experience. An experience means one particular event, and experiments or experts do not fit the meaning.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “experience”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.