long a

noun — 2 senses

long a

noun
1

The vowel sound in the words game and cake; /eɪ/. (The presence of a long vowel is often signaled in spelling by a silent e that follows it, as in the examples here, or by the fact that a subsequent consonant is single rather than doubled, as for example in gaming versus gamming).

2

Human sciences, Linguistics, Sciences UK, Especially The vowel sound in the English words bath and castle when pronounced with an open back unrounded vowel (/ɑː/); associated with southern England accents.

Entry derived from the Wiktionary, under licence CC BY-SA 4.0 — list of authors.