VOWEL SOUND

Pronunciation (US): (GB):

Meaning:

A speech sound made with the vocal tract open

Synonyms:

vowel; vowel sound

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Hypernyms ("vowel sound" is a kind of...):

phone; sound; speech sound ((phonetics) an individual sound unit of speech without concern as to whether or not it is a phoneme of some language)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "vowel sound"):

ablaut (a vowel whose quality or length is changed to indicate linguistic distinctions (such as sing sang sung song))

diphthong (a vowel sound that starts near the articulatory position for one vowel and moves toward the position for another)

schwa; shwa (a neutral middle vowel; occurs in unstressed syllables)

stem vowel; thematic vowel (a vowel that ends a stem and precedes an inflection)