vowel

CEFRA2

/ˈvaʊ.əl/

noun

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    noun

    A speech sound made with the mouth open, such as a, e, or o.

  2. 02

    noun

    Extra detail

    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).

Examples

  • Vowel harmony is important in the Hungarian language.

  • A schwa represents a neutral vowel.

At a glance

Sits at A2 on the CEFR scale

Senses
4
Parts of speech
1
Citations
1
Synonyms
2

Deep Dive

noun

Extra meanings

  1. To add vowel points to a consonantal script (e.g. niqqud in Hebrew or harakat in Arabic).

  2. A sound produced by the vocal cords with relatively little restriction of the oral cavity, forming the prominent sound of a syllable.

More examples

In context

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

  • The word cwm, borrowed from Welsh, is an example of the letter w serving as a vowel in English.

  • The word facetiously is spelled with all six vowels in alphabetical order.

Synonyms

Antonyms

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

The letter 'a' is a blank in the English alphabet and appears in many words.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

noun

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.