Meaning & use
feeling relevant
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Meanings
phrasefixed phrase
Believing that you matter or that your work and opinions have value in a situation.
Grammar: Used of people, often with to: feeling relevant to the team. 'Relevant' here is an adjective after 'feeling'.
Patterns
- feel relevant to someone
- feel relevant again
- stop feeling relevant
After the merger, many older staff stopped feeling relevant.
She took on a new project because she wanted to feel relevant again.
Volunteering helped him feel relevant to the community.
phrasefixed phrase
Seeming connected to the subject being discussed or considered.
Grammar: Used of ideas, facts, or questions, usually with to: the data feels relevant to our problem.
Patterns
- feel relevant to something
- seem relevant
His question felt relevant to the whole debate.
The old study suddenly felt relevant to the new outbreak.
Common combinations
- feel relevant to
- Teachers want their lessons to feel relevant to students' lives.
- stop feeling relevant
- He stopped feeling relevant once the younger engineers took over.
- want to feel relevant
- Many retired people want to feel relevant and useful.
- make someone feel relevant
- A short thank-you note can make a volunteer feel relevant.
- remain relevant
- A good newspaper must remain relevant to its readers.
Synonyms and how they differ
- valued
- Focuses on being appreciated by others, whereas 'feeling relevant' focuses on whether you still matter in the situation.
- useful
- Describes practical help; 'feeling relevant' is more about importance and connection than usefulness.
- important
- Stronger and more general; 'feeling relevant' suggests fitting the current topic or group.
Opposites
Word family
- relevance noun
- The quality of being connected to the matter at hand.
- relevant adjective
- Connected with what is being discussed.
- irrelevant adjective
- Not connected with the subject; the opposite of relevant.
- relevantly adverb
- In a way that relates to the topic.
Commonly confused: feeling relevant or feeling relevant? feeling relevant or reverent?
feeling relevant vs feeling relevant
Do not confuse it with 'feeling relieved', which means feeling calm after worry ends.
feeling relevant vs reverent
A similar-sounding adjective meaning deeply respectful; it has nothing to do with relevance.
Practice
Choose the sentence that uses 'feeling relevant' most naturally.
Choose one answer.
People feel relevant to a group or situation, so option B is natural. Option A wrongly applies the feeling to a bridge, and options C and D use impossible patterns with 'of' and an unrelated topic.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “feeling relevant”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.