Spirant Definition

spīrənt
adjective
Having the nature of a spirant; fricative.
Webster's New World
Synonyms:
noun
A consonantal sound, as () or (v), produced by the passage of breath through the partially closed oral cavity; fricative.
Webster's New World

(linguistics, archaic) A fricative.

Wiktionary
Synonyms:

Other Word Forms of Spirant

Noun

Singular:
spirant
Plural:
spirants

Origin of Spirant

  • From Latin spirans, present participle of spÄ«rō (“I blow"). Compare inspire, expire, respiration, etc.

    From Wiktionary

  • Latin spīrāns spīrant- present participle of spīrāre to breathe

    From American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition

Spirant Sentence Examples

  • In Late Latin there was a tendency to this spirant pronunciation which appears as early as the beginning of the 2nd century A.D.; by the 3rd century b and consonantal u are inextricably confused.

  • V is therefore a voiced labio-dental spirant, the breath escaping through a very narrow slit between the lower lip and the upper teeth.

  • In modern Greek the ancient b (d) has become the voiced spirant (8), though it is still written b.

  • He thinks that the guttural element in E was a spirant, and therefore different from X, which is an aspirate.

  • The sign x was kept in the western group for the guttural spirant in E, which was written X*; but, as this spirant occurred nowhere else, the combination was often abbreviated, and X was used for X precisely as in the Italic alphabets we shall find that F =f develops out of a combination FH.

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Spirant Is Also Mentioned In

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Words Starting With

SSPSPI

Words Ending With

TNTANT

Unscrambles

spirant

Words Starting With S and Ending With T

Starts With S & Ends With TStarts With SP & Ends With TStarts With S & Ends With NT

Word Length

7 Letter Words7 Letter Words Starting With S7 Letter Words Ending With T