umlaut Definition
um·laut (o̵om′lo̵ut)
noun
- a historical change in the sound of a vowel, caused by its assimilation to another vowel or semivowel originally occurring in the next syllable but later sometimes lost; mutation: in English, the differences of vowel in certain singulars and plurals (Ex.: foot—feet, mouse—mice) or in certain causative verbs and the words from which they are derived (Ex.: gold—gild) are due to the effects of umlaut on the second word of each pair
- a vowel resulting from such assimilation
- the diacritical mark (¨) placed over a vowel, esp. in German, to indicate umlaut
Etymology: Ger, change of sound (< um, about + laut, sound, akin to loud): coined (1774) by F. G. Klopstock (1724-1803), Ger poet, but first used in special senses by Jakob Jakob (Ludwig Karl) Grimm (1819)
transitive verb
to modify the sound of (a vowel) or write (a vowel) with an umlaut
umlaut Usage Examples
Adjective modifier
German: Purchases Direct faxes from the German keyboard had the French circumflex instead of the German umlaut ( Item 3 ).
Modifies a noun
- facet: Thus we have to convert each character to a lower case character before we hand it over to the umlaut facet object.
- object: Thus we have to convert each character to a lower case character before we hand it over to the umlaut facet object.
Noun used with modifier
o: Recently I've used the character ö , that is o umlaut.
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