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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
vowel
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
open vowel
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
close
▪ In some accents - particularly London ones - we often find a close back rounded vowel instead.
▪ There is uncertainty, too, about the corresponding close back rounded vowels.
▪ Weak syllables with close back rounded vowels are not so commonly found.
long
▪ For speechreaders, the most important are the five long vowels.
low
▪ Figure 3.5 Percentage low vowel in variable monosyllables and prefixed and inflected disyllables.
▪ Figure 3.6 Percentage low vowel in all other disyllables.
rounded
▪ In some accents - particularly London ones - we often find a close back rounded vowel instead.
▪ There is uncertainty, too, about the corresponding close back rounded vowels.
▪ Weak syllables with close back rounded vowels are not so commonly found.
short
▪ If the language has long and short vowels and consonants, this will affect the rhythm of the language.
■ NOUN
phoneme
▪ Diphthongs are made from a simple vowel phoneme followed by one of,,.
sound
▪ These often involve vowel sounds having their Creole rather than their expected London pronunciations.
▪ His diction, even if some of the vowel sounds are a shade tight, is also exemplary.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
close vowel
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ And all his fans can rest assured that even a vowel change won't fool us.
▪ Diphthongs are made from a simple vowel phoneme followed by one of,,.
▪ In some accents - particularly London ones - we often find a close back rounded vowel instead.
▪ Much of the easy flow of speech depends on the neutral vowel.
▪ Some phonologists maintain that a syllabic consonant is really a case of a vowel and a consonant that have become combined.
▪ These often involve vowel sounds having their Creole rather than their expected London pronunciations.
▪ Weak syllables with close back rounded vowels are not so commonly found.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Vowel

Vowel \Vow"el\, a. Of or pertaining to a vowel; vocal.

Vowel

Vowel \Vow"el\, n. [F. voyelle, or an OF. form without y, L. vocalis (sc. littera), from vocalis sounding, from vox, vocis, a voice, sound. See Vocal.] (Phon.) A vocal, or sometimes a whispered, sound modified by resonance in the oral passage, the peculiar resonance in each case giving to each several vowel its distinctive character or quality as a sound of speech; -- distinguished from a consonant in that the latter, whether made with or without vocality, derives its character in every case from some kind of obstructive action by the mouth organs. Also, a letter or character which represents such a sound. See Guide to Pronunciation, [sect][sect] 5, 146-149.

Note: In the English language, the written vowels are a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes w and y. The spoken vowels are much more numerous.

Close vowel. See under Close, a.

Vowel point. See under Point, n.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
vowel

c.1300, from Old French voieul (Modern French voyelle), from Latin vocalis, in littera vocalis, literally "vocal letter," from vox (genitive vocis) "voice" (see voice (n.)). Vowel shift in reference to the pronunciation change between Middle and Modern English is attested from 1909. The Hawaiian word hooiaioia, meaning "certified," has the most consecutive vowels of any word in current human speech; the English record-holder is queueing.

Wiktionary
vowel

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

WordNet
vowel
  1. n. a speech sound made with the vocal tract open [syn: vowel sound] [ant: consonant]

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

Wikipedia
Vowel

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, with two competing definitions. In the more common phonetic definition, a vowel is a sound pronounced with an open vocal tract, so that the tongue does not touch the lips, teeth, or roof of the mouth, such as the English "ah" or "oh" . There is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as the English "sh" , which have a constriction or closure at some point along the vocal tract. In the other, phonological definition, a vowel is defined as syllabic, the sound that forms the peak of a syllable. A phonetically equivalent but non-syllabic sound is a semivowel.

In oral languages, phonetic vowels normally form the peak (nucleus) of many to all syllables, whereas consonants form the onset and (in languages that have them) coda. Some languages allow other sounds to form the nucleus of a syllable, such as the syllabic (i.e., vocalic) l in the English word table (when not considered to have a weak vowel sound: ) or the syllabic r in Serbo-Croatian word vrt "garden".

The word vowel comes from the Latin word vocalis, meaning "vocal" ("relating to voice"). In English, the word vowel is commonly used to mean both vowel sounds and the written symbols that represent them.

Usage examples of "vowel".

His use of final vowels after the noun, and his rejection of the pronoun, which apocope in the Arabic verb renders necessary in the everyday speech of the people, told the Master he was listening to some archaic, uncorrupted form of the language.

The cuneiform system of writing was syllabic, each character denoting a syllable, so that we know what were the vowels in a proper name as well as the consonants.

He wanted me to study his tongue positions as he demonstrated the pronunciation of consonants, diphthongs, long and short vowels.

Iodine has a name that starts with two vowels, but so do einsteinium and europium.

Sometimes spelled Cassilde, or the final vowel sometimes elided in spoken language.

Exeter, and was a nephew of John Vowel, alias Hoker, Chamberlain and Historian of the city.

When quoting Primitive Elvish forms, I will however use circumflexes to mark long vowels.

The Wittes cordially loathed and refused to acknowledge these distant cousins, who during the War of The Tiers defiantly split from the main family, changed a vowel, were classified as Fourths, and continued to use the Witte colors of yellow and red to irritate their Blood relations.

One night, back when he was a second-story man, he had the incredible luck to break into the affluent home of Minne Khlaetsch, an astrologer of the Hamburg School, who was, congenitally it seems, unable to pronounce, even perceive, umlauts over vowels.

There was an absence from this section both of the modern philological and archeological spirit, and the report reads more like that of a congress of University tutors of the last century met to discuss the reading of a passage in a Greek play, or the accentuation of a vowel, before the dawn of Comparative Philology had swept away the cobwebs of the Scholiasts.

And so it was natural enough that they should be shared by various ladies, who, having conjugated the verb to live as far as the preterpluperfect tense, were ready to change one of its vowels and begin with it in the present indicative.

For my part, I consider Silverdale was very well served for having been so quizzy and disobliging about accepting my vowels, but Evelyn said that it was of the first importance to recover the wretched thing before Silverdale discovered that it was only a copy.

There is no bigger fool than a man who multiplies his vowels in a desperate bid to recoup his losses.

F, though having a name beginning with a vowel, is numbered by the grammarians among the semivowels, yet has this quality of a mute, that it is commodiously sounded before a liquid, as flask, fry, freckle.

We constantly notice in his verse that dainty effect which the ear loves, and which comes from deft marshalling of consonants and vowels, so that they shall add their suppler and subtler reinforcement to the steady infantry tramp of rhythm.