vowel

From Middle English vouel, from Old French vouel, a variant of voyeul (whence French voyelle), from Latin vōcālis (“voiced”), itself a semantic loan of Koine Greek φωνῆεν (phōnêen). Doublet of vocal.

• enPR: vouʹəl, IPA^(key): /ˈvaʊ.əl/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• (also) enPR: voul, IPA^(key): /vaʊl/

• Audio (UK)

  (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.

   In Welsh, the w usually represents a vowel.

2. (orthography) A letter representing the sound of vowel; in English, the vowels are a, e, i, o, u, and y.

   Facetious is spelled with five vowels in alphabetical order.

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

• vocalic
• consonant
• liquid

• → Yoruba: fáwẹ̀lì

• 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).
   • 2019, Tim Mackintosh-Smith, Arabs, Yale University Press, p. 52:

     However it should be vowelled – perhaps ‘Almaqah’ – his name seems to be composed of ‘Il’, the general name of the paramount Semitic deity […] , plus another element that is possibly from the Sabaic verb wqh, ‘to command’ […] .

• vowelize
• vocalize

• wolve