Vowel
/ˈvaʊ.əl/ noun, verb
noun, verb ·Moderate ·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’ […]."
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
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.