consonant
1
3.6
- noun
- /ˈkɒnsənənt/
- Specialized
:
consonante
- And chorus, keep those consonants crisp.
- consonants and vowels
- ending consonant
- stop consonants
They're beginning consonants between PE with the lips and CU with the back of the tongue.
- They're beginning consonants between PE with the lips and CU with the back of the tongue.
- A room is vowels, consonants, a constriction, a making, a formulation.
Examples
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You hit the consonants a tad hard, though.
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What's the most common double consonant in the English language?
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Spanish does not easily lend itself to words that end in consonants other than "-n," "-r," or "-s."
Academic text (1992) -
Seven consonants.
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Early readers require skills in hearing differences in sounds to reproduce beginning and ending consonants, consonant blends, and vowels to form words for effective verbal and written communication.
Academic text (2011) -
A consonant is any letter of the alphabet that is not a vowel.
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In the word 'cat', both 'c' and 't' are consonants while 'a' is a vowel.
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To pronounce the word correctly, emphasize the consonants clearly.
Antonyms
Compounds
- Specialized
A speech sound made by narrowing the mouth so air keeps flowing
- Specialized
A change in a word's first consonant sound caused by grammar in languages like Welsh
- Literature
A repeat of consonant sounds at the ends of words to make lines sound similar
- Specialized
A speech sound you make with the front of the tongue, like t, d, s or n
- Specialized
A speech sound made by touching the tongue tip to the upper front teeth
- Specialized
A consonant sound made by closing the throat and then releasing air quickly
- Specialized
A sound that starts blocked then changes to a noisy hiss, like ch in chair or j in joy
- Specialized
A speech sound made by touching the tongue to the ridge just behind the top front teeth
- Specialized
A speech sound you make by forcing breath through a narrow gap, like s or f
- Specialized
A consonant sound made when the lower lip touches the upper teeth, like f or v
- Specialized
A sound you make when speaking at the back of the mouth or in the throat
- Specialized
A speech sound made by letting air through the nose while the mouth is closed, like m, n, or ng
- Specialized
A speech sound made when air leaves only through the mouth, not the nose
- Specialized
A speech sound where you tighten the back of the throat when speaking
- Specialized
A speech sound, like p or b, made by stopping the air and then letting it out quickly
- Specialized
A consonant sound made with the tongue just behind the top front teeth, like the 'sh' in shoe
- Specialized
A consonant made with the tongue near the ridge just behind the teeth
- Specialized
A sound made with the back of the tongue touching the soft roof of the mouth like k in cat
- Specialized
A consonant you make without the vocal cords moving, like the 'p' in pat
How Vowel-Like
Surface Forms
Morphology
consonant = sonant (opaque) = con + son + ant
The morphological pieces are learned as technical linguistic terms rather than transparent English morphemes, so the phonetic sense is not predictable for average learners.
Etymology
Consonant comes from the Latin parts con- 'with' and sonare 'to sound', giving the idea of sounds that work 'with' others. So a consonant is a speech sound made by blocking or changing the air in the mouth and that usually comes with a vowel.