- a variation of ambiance.
ambience
Americannoun
-
ambiences
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of ambience
First recorded in 1885–90
Explanation
Ambience is another word for atmosphere in the sense of the mood a place or setting has. If an expensive restaurant has soft lighting and peaceful music, it has a pleasant, soothing ambience. Ambience is one of those words that we've out and out stolen from French. In French, the word meaning the same thing is, you guessed it, ambience. This is a word you're going to want to know if you have any interest in restaurant reviews — they always want to talk about the ambience. As a funny quirk, the word has a positive feel to it; it can be used to mean nice atmosphere without even using the word, nice, as in, "Hey, this place really has ambience."
Vocabulary lists containing ambience
"They Speak for Success" and "Breaking the Ice"
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"First Love Language" by Stefany Valentine, Broken Hearts and Broken Homes–A Different Love Language
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Somewhere Between Bitter and Sweet
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
It’s got a good cream top, and the shop has a cool vibe and ambience.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 24, 2026
“It makes the ambience better. The vibe is better and it’s safer.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 5, 2026
Not to be outdone by the album’s soaring musical ambience, Styles’ lyrics never disappoint, blending his penchant for witticism with pop-culture philosophy.
From Salon ● Mar. 6, 2026
Starbucks is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to improve cafe ambience and service.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 28, 2026
The whole evening radiated an Old World ambience, as though the event were taking place in 1872, in a huge European beer garden, rather than 1972, in a covered Icelandic arena.
From "Endgame" by Frank Brady
Its headquarters on the Avenue Montaigne are barely 3 miles from the Parc des Princes, but the ambiences are worlds apart.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 4, 2026
The color palette, the ambiences, the use of natural light.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 26, 2024
Capturing as much of that as possible added to the authenticity — and not to mention that I went out and recorded a bunch of the ambiences.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 15, 2023
Now he brings his epic and oceanic ambiences to a challenging new musical landscape: indoors.
From The Guardian ● Aug. 27, 2010
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
