vowel

vowel Definition

vowel (vo̵u′əl)

noun

any voiced speech sound characterized by generalized friction of the air passing in a continuous stream through the pharynx and opened mouth but with no constriction narrow enough to produce local friction; the sound of the greatest prominence in most syllables
a letter (as a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y) or a character or a symbol representing such a sound

Etymology: ME vowelle < MFr vouel < L vocalis (littera), vocal (letter), vowel < vox, voice

adjective

of a vowel or vowels

vowel Usage Examples

Converse of subject

precede: The formant structure of the nasal prototype has little effect on the nasal percept when it is preceded by a vowel.

Converse of object

accent: To type accented vowels, use your normal method of doing this under Windows.
stress: However, ' arming ' would not rhyme with ' calling ' , since the stressed vowels are different.
contain: SOLUTION 41 The Written Number SOLUTION 1 What is the SMALLEST number which, when written, contains all five vowels?
represent: Actually, " w " can represent either a vowel or a consonant in Welsh spelling.
follow: The following vowels will be read in the first tone.

Adjective modifier

unstressed: Rhiannon's spelling is largely accurate with a few slips, mostly with unstressed vowels.
cardinal: There Peter acquired such arcane arts as the proper pronunciation of Daniel Jones's cardinal vowels.
preceding: Lesson 2 e at the end of a word sometimes makes the preceding vowel ' hard ' .
rounded: After the voiceless alveolar plosive comes a mid back rounded vowel, and after that a rather long uvular nasal.
nasal: In Bengali, however, nasality is initially interpreted as an underlying nasal vowel.
weak: To them we must add schwa ( right ), the weak vowel of a go, b a nan a.

Modifies a noun

phoneme: Other lists focus on common vowel phonemes or a mixture of phonemes.
formant: David Smith and Roy Patterson An analysis of Peterson and Barney's vowel formant data to investigate the evidence for scaling in human vowels.
digraph: Magic e - an exercise to use a split vowel digraph to change the meaning of a word.
diagraph: W2 to blend to read words containing the same vowel diagraphs and triagraphs.
harmony: I haven't yet figured the vowel harmony thing.
sound: I was taught a chant at the birth group we went to which uses the five vowel sounds: the Mother Sounds of language.

Preposition: in

syllable: Simple vowels in unstressed syllables are short, whatever the following consonant.
word: The taps, however, stand for the vowels in the word ( one tap for A, two for E, etc.

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