What does "vowel" mean?

A sound produced by the vocal cords with relatively little restriction of the oral cavity, forming the prominent sound of a syllable.

What is a synonym for "vowel"?

Common synonyms include: accented, allophone, alveolar, apical, apico-alveolar, apico-dental.

Vowel

//ˈvaʊ.əl// noun, verb

noun, verb ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun

1
A sound produced by the vocal cords with relatively little restriction of the oral cavity, forming the prominent sound of a syllable.
"In Welsh, the w usually represents a vowel."
2
a speech sound made with the vocal tract open wordnet
3
A letter or diacritic representing the sound of a vowel; in English, the vowels are a, e, i, o, u, w (rarely), y (sometimes).
"Facetiously is spelled with all six vowels in alphabetical order."
4
a letter of the alphabet standing for a spoken vowel wordnet

Verb

1
To add vowel points to a consonantal script (e.g. niqqud in Hebrew or harakat in Arabic).
"However it should be vowelled – perhaps ‘Almaqah’ – his name seems to be composed of ‘Il’, the general name of the paramount Semitic deity […], plus another element that is possibly from the Sabaic verb wqh, ‘to command’ […]."

Synonyms

All synonyms

accented allophone alveolar apical apico-alveolar apico-dental

Antonyms

All antonyms

consonant

Example

More examples

"This vowel change has much to do with the overall accent pattern assigned to each word."

Etymology

From Middle English vowel, from Old French vouel, a variant of voyeul (whence French voyelle), from Latin vōcālis (“voiced”), itself a semantic loan of Koine Greek φωνῆεν (phōnêen). Doublet of vocal and vocalis.

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