vowel

Borrowed from Old French vouel (French voyelle), from Latin vōcālis (“voiced”), a semantic loan of Koine Greek φωνῆεν (phōnêen). Doublet of vocal.

• enPR: vouʹəl, IPA^(key): /ˈvaʊ.əl/
• (US, also) enPR: voul, IPA^(key): /vaʊ.l̩/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -aʊəl, -aʊl

vowel (plural vowels)

1. (phonetics) A sound produced by the vocal cords with relatively little restriction of the oral cavity, forming the prominent sound of a syllable.
2. (orthography) A letter representing the sound of vowel; in English, the vowels are a, e, i, o and u, and sometimes y.

• (sound): consonant
• (letter): consonant

• vocalic
• consonant
• liquid

• vocalization

Placing of an element:

• prevocalic (occurring before a vowel)
• intervocalic (occurring between vowels)
• postvocalic (occurring after a vowel)

Types of vowels (phonetics):

• front, central, back
• rounded, unrounded
• close, near-close, close-mid, mid, open-mid, near-open, open

vowel (third-person singular simple present vowels, present participle vowelling or (US) voweling, simple past and past participle vowelled or (US) voweled)

1. (linguistics) To add vowel points to a consonantal script (e.g. niqqud in Hebrew or harakat in Arabic)

• vocalize

• wolve