vowel
/ˈvaʊ.əl/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.33 in modern English
11
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
2
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A sound produced by the vocal cords with relatively little restriction of the oral cavity, forming the prominent sound of a syllable.
noun
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).
verb
To add vowel points to a consonantal script (e.g. niqqud in Hebrew or harakat in Arabic).
Example Sentences
- "Hawaiian has either five or twenty-five vowels, depending on how they are counted."
- "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."
- "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’ […]."
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.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: *wekʷ-, vowel, vouel, vōcālis