prevalent
Widely existing or commonly occurring in a particular place or group.
readingwriting-task-2speakingHealthEnvironmentCulture and media
IELTS use
Describing common problems or features in Task 2 and Reading; discussing societal issues in Speaking.
Examples
- Obesity is prevalent in many developed countries due to sedentary lifestyles.
- The use of social media is prevalent among teenagers for both communication and entertainment.
Collocations
- most prevalent in
- Lung cancer is most prevalent in populations with high smoking rates.
Word family
- Noun
- prevalence
- Adjective
- prevalent
- Adverb
- prevalently
Paraphrases
- widespread: Slightly more general, also very common.
- common: Simpler, but less precise for academic contexts.
Common mistakes
- prevelant to prevalent. Spelling error: the correct vowel is 'e', not 'e' followed by 'l'.
- prevalent in among to prevalent among/in. Choose one preposition; 'among' for groups, 'in' for locations.