vowel meaning: definition, etymology and quotations

vowel

noun

/ˈvaʊ.əl/ · also /vaʊl/

Etymology From Middle English vowel, 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 and vocalis.

Human sciences, Linguistics, Phonetics, Phonology, Sciences A sound produced by the vocal cords with relatively little restriction of the oral cavity, forming the prominent sound of a syllable.

Hawaiian has either five or twenty-five vowels, depending on how they are counted.

Communications, Journalism, Literature, Media, Orthography, Publishing, Writing A letter or diacritic representing the sound of a vowel; in English, the vowels are a, e, i, o, u, y (sometimes), and w (rarely).

The word facetiously is spelled with all six vowels in alphabetical order.
The word cwm, borrowed from Welsh, is an example of the letter w serving as a vowel in English.

Derived terms: 49 terms
back vowel, cardinal vowel, dark vowel, disemvowel, echo vowel, front vowel, full vowel, gliding vowel, half-long vowel, happy vowel, inherent vowel, lax vowel, linking vowel, long vowel, long-vowel mark, nasal vowel, natural vowel, neutral vowel, oral vowel, overlong vowel, prop vowel, R-coloured vowel, R-colored vowel, reduced vowel, rhotacized vowel, rounded vowel, semi-vowel, semivowel, short vowel, tense vowel, thematic vowel, unrounded vowel, vowel harmony, vowelization, vowelisation, vowelize, vowelise, vowel killer, vowelless, vowelling, vowel lowering, vowel mutation, vowel point, vowel pointing, vowel quantity, vowel reduction, vowel rhyme, vowel sign, weak vowel merger
Related terms: intervocalic, postvocalic, prevocalic, vocalic, vocalization, Types of vowels:, front, central, back, rounded, unrounded, close, near-close, close-mid, mid, open-mid, near-open, open, Other categories of sounds:, consonant, liquid

vowel

verb

Human sciences, Linguistics, Sciences To add vowel points to a consonantal script (e.g. niqqud in Hebrew or harakat in Arabic).

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’ […].2019, Tim Mackintosh-Smith, Arabs, Yale University Press, page 52: