Wiktionary
n. 1 (context physics English) A band of frequencies, in a sound spectrum, that have a greater intensity; they determine the quality of a sound; especially the characteristic sounds of the consonants. 2 (cx linguistics English) a morpheme occurring as an affix to a root or stem, forming an extended root or stem
Wikipedia
A formant, as defined by James Jeans, is a harmonic of a note that is augmented by a resonance. The speech researcher Gunnar Fant defines formants as "the spectral peaks of the sound spectrum |P(f)|". In acoustics generally, a very similar definition is widely used: the Acoustical Society of America defines a formant as: "a range of frequencies [of a complex sound] in which there is an absolute or relative maximum in the sound spectrum". In speech science and phonetics, however, a formant is also sometimes used to mean an acoustic resonance of the human vocal tract. Thus, in phonetics, formant can mean either a resonance or the spectral maximum that the resonance produces. Formants are often measured as amplitude peaks in the frequency spectrum of the sound, using a spectrogram (in the figure) or a spectrum analyzer and, in the case of the voice, this gives an estimate of the vocal tract resonances. In vowels spoken with a high fundamental frequency, as in a female or child voice, however, the frequency of the resonance may lie between the widely spaced harmonics and hence no corresponding peak is visible.
A room can be said to have formants characteristic of that particular room, due to the way sound reflects from its walls and objects. Room formants of this nature reinforce themselves by emphasizing specific frequencies and absorbing others, as exploited, for example, by Alvin Lucier in his piece I Am Sitting in a Room.
Usage examples of "formant".
By repeating this term over and over, perhaps in the same rhythm at which you squeeze a ball, you can reduce it to an empty series of phonemes, just formants and fricatives, trochaically stressed, signifying zip.