Objective or subjective?
objective is an adjective meaning “Of or relating to a material object, actual existence or reality”; subjective is an adjective meaning “Formed, as in opinions, based upon a person's feelings or intuition, rather…”. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) objective is about 3.7 times as common as subjective.
What is the difference between objective and subjective?
| objective | subjective | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | adjective, noun | adjective, noun |
| Meaning | Of or relating to a material object, actual existence or reality Not influenced by the strong emotions or prejudices A material object that physically exists | Formed, as in opinions, based upon a person's feelings or intuition, rather than upon observation or purely logical reasoning; coming more from within the… Pertaining to subjects as opposed to objects (A subject is one who perceives or is aware; an object is the thing perceived or the thing that the subject is… The subjective case |
| Example | The objective complement in "She makes us angry" is the adjective "angry" | none recorded |
| Pronunciation | /ɒbˈd͡ʒɛk.tɪv/ /əbˈd͡ʒɛk.tɪv/ | /səbˈd͡ʒɛktɪv/ /sʌbˈd͡ʒɛktɪv/ |
| In writing | 23 times per million words | 6.2 times per million words |
Sources: objective and subjective in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of objective and subjective
objective
- 1
Of or relating to a material object, actual existence or reality
- 2
A material object that physically exists
- 3
Not influenced by the strong emotions or prejudices
- 4
A goal that is striven for
- 5
Based on observed facts; without purely subjective assessment
- 6
The objective case
- 7
Mind-independent
- 8
a noun or pronoun in the objective case
subjective
- 1
Formed, as in opinions, based upon a person's feelings or intuition, rather than upon observation or purely logical reasoning; coming more from within the observer than from observations of the…
- 2
The subjective case
- 3
Pertaining to subjects as opposed to objects (A subject is one who perceives or is aware; an object is the thing perceived or the thing that the subject is aware of.)
- 4
A noun or pronoun in the subjective case
- 5
Resulting from or pertaining to personal mindsets or experience, arising from perceptive mental conditions within the brain and not necessarily or directly from external stimuli
- 6
Lacking in reality or substance
- 7
As used by Carl Jung, the innate worldview orientation of the introverted personality types
- 8
Mind-dependent
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, objective or subjective?
objective appears 23 times per million words; subjective 6.2 times per million words.
objective 23 times per million wordssubjective 6.2 times per million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search objective vs subjective?
“objective vs subjective” is searched about 49,500 times a month on Google and 3,230 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“subjective vs objective”, “objective or subjective”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.