VOWEL

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does vowel mean? 

• VOWEL (noun)
  The noun VOWEL has 2 senses:

1. a speech sound made with the vocal tract open

2. a letter of the alphabet standing for a spoken vowel

  Familiarity information: VOWEL used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• VOWEL (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A speech sound made with the vocal tract open

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Synonyms:

vowel; vowel sound

Hypernyms ("vowel" 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"):

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)

Antonym:

consonant (a speech sound that is not a vowel)

Derivation:

vocalic (being or containing or characterized by vowels)

vocalic (relating to or associated with or containing a vowel)

vowelize (pronounce as a vowel)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A letter of the alphabet standing for a spoken vowel

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

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

alphabetic character; letter; letter of the alphabet (the conventional characters of the alphabet used to represent speech)

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

vowel point (a mark placed below or near a consonant (as in Hebrew or Arabic) to indicate the spoken vowel)

Derivation:

vocalic (being or containing or characterized by vowels)

vocalic (relating to or associated with or containing a vowel)

 Context examples 

What a difference a vowel makes!

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, variants of "a" denote various vowels.

(A, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

A turned ‹a› (‹ɐ›) is used by the International Phonetic Alphabet for the near-open central vowel, while a turned capital ‹A› (‹∀›) is used in predicate logic to indicate universal quantification.

(A, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

In X-SAMPA, capital "A" denotes the open back unrounded vowel and lowercase "a" denotes the open front unrounded vowel.

(A, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

In most other languages that use the Latin alphabet, "a" denotes an open central unrounded vowel (/a/).

(A, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

In English, ‹a› by itself usually denotes the near-open front unrounded vowel (/æ/) as in pad, the open back unrounded vowel (/ɑː/) as in father, or, in concert with a later orthographic vowel, the diphthong /eɪ/ as in ace and major, due to effects of the great vowel shift.

(A, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)