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Glite Dictionary
💨 Friction sound 💨 A fricative
spirant

spirant

9.9
A consonant sound made by pushing air through a small opening in the mouth, like f or s
  • noun
  • /ˈspaɪrənt/
  • Specialized
translation icon : espirante
  • In linguistics, a spirant is produced when airflow creates a sound through a narrow opening in the vocal tract.
  • voiced spirants

Examples

  • Many languages include spirant consonants, which add complexity to their phonetic systems.

  • The spirant sounds in the language are essential for distinguishing between different words.

  • The second round of spirantization eliminated those short counterparts of the intervocalic geminate stops by making them spirants.

    Academic text (2000)

  • In the cases of addormiscere and sup*addurare, the variant showing the voiced spirant also survived, as evidenced by OSp. adormecer and adurar.

    Academic text (2000)

Synonyms

fricative
vsspirant
  • Specialized
1 7.6

A consonant sound made when air passes through a small gap, like f or s

is the same meaning but an alternative single-word label
fricative consonant
vsspirant
  • Specialized
7.5

A speech sound you make by forcing breath through a narrow gap, like s or f

is the same meaning but a shorter single-word form

Surface Forms

spirant singular
spirants plural

Morphology

spirant = spir (opaque) = spir + ant

Formed from the combining form 'spir-' plus '-ant'; the base is not an independent English word and the noun sense is a specialist phonetic label, so the relation is not useful for general learners.

Etymology

Spirant comes from the Latin spirare 'to breathe' and names a consonant made when you force 'breath' through a narrow opening. That's why sounds such as 's' and 'f' are called spirant consonants: they are made by moving air with friction, not by stopping it completely.