Sandhi
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Any of a wide variety of phonological processes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries, such as the fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of sounds due to neighboring sounds or due to the grammatical function of adjacent words. countable, uncountable
"Mixed sandhi has two divisions, viz. when a word ending in a vowel is followed by a word beginning with a consonant, and when a word ending in a consonant is followed by a word beginning with a vowel. Cases of mixed sandhi are very few, and in the second division are limited to the changes of anusvâra before a vowel."
- 2 the articulatory process whereby the pronunciation of a word or morpheme changes when it is followed immediately by another (especially in fluent speech) wordnet
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"Mixed sandhi has two divisions, viz. when a word ending in a vowel is followed by a word beginning with a consonant, and when a word ending in a consonant is followed by a word beginning with a vowel. Cases of mixed sandhi are very few, and in the second division are limited to the changes of anusvâra before a vowel."
Etymology
Learned borrowing from Sanskrit संधि (saṃdhí, “junction, union”). Partial piecewise doublet of synthesis and synth.
Related phrases
More for "sandhi"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.