Backness

//ˈbæk.nɪs// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Quality of being a back vowel. uncountable

    "The most important aspects of vowel quality are tongue height, frontness/backness and lip rounding."

  2. 2
    A quality of vowels, indicating the horizontal position of the tongue relative to the back of the mouth (front, near-front, central, near-back, or back). uncountable

Synonyms

All synonyms
frontness

Example

More examples

"The most important aspects of vowel quality are tongue height, frontness/backness and lip rounding."

Etymology

From back + -ness.

Related phrases

back vowel

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.