Suprasegmental

//ˌsuːp.ɹə.sɛɡˈmɛn.təl// adj, noun

adj, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An effect on speech, such as length, stress, tone, and phonation type, that extends over more than one segment of sounds.
Adjective
  1. 1
    Of or relating to a suprasegmental. not-comparable

    "There are two kinds of phonemes in Chinese: segmental phonemes, which may be thought of as sequential sounds, and suprasegmental phonemes or tones, which in a sense are added to the syllable as a whole."

  2. 2
    More than a segment. not-comparable
Adjective
  1. 1
    pertaining to a feature of speech that extends over more than a single speech sound wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
inflectionintonationmodulationpitchtoneunited

Example

More examples

"There are two kinds of phonemes in Chinese: segmental phonemes, which may be thought of as sequential sounds, and suprasegmental phonemes or tones, which in a sense are added to the syllable as a whole."

Etymology

From supra- + segmental.

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