adj, noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   Any of several speech sounds produced by air flowing through a constriction in the oral cavity and typically producing a sibilant, hissing, or buzzing quality; a fricative consonant.

   "Watt listened for a time, for the voice was far from unmelodious. The fricatives in particular were pleasing."

2. 2
   a continuant consonant produced by breath moving against a narrowing of the vocal tract wordnet

Adjective

1. 1
   produced by air flowing through a restriction in the oral cavity.

Adjective

1. 1
   of speech sounds produced by forcing air through a constricted passage (as ‘f’, ‘s’, ‘z’, or ‘th’ in both ‘thin’ and ‘then’) wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

spirantcontinuantcontinuantfricative consonantfricative consonantfriction

Example

More examples

"Ashkenazi Hebrew uses a sibilant fricative where Yemenite Hebrew has a non-sibilant fricative."

Etymology

From New Latin fricatīvus, from Latin fricāre (“to rub”).

Related phrases

dental fricativegroove fricativelateral fricativeslit fricative

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