Word.ws English Dictionary

cardinal vowel

cardinal vowel noun: a vowel sound produced when the tongue is in an extreme position, either front or back, high or low.

Noun

cardinal vowel (plural cardinal vowels)

  1. a vowel sound produced when the tongue is in an extreme position, either front or back, high or low.

Forms of cardinal vowel

pluralcardinal vowels

Origin of cardinal vowel

The term was coined by the British phoneticians Daniel Jones in the early 20th century.

Questions about cardinal vowel

What does cardinal vowel mean?
Cardinal vowel means a vowel sound produced when the tongue is in an extreme position, either front or back, high or low.
What part of speech is cardinal vowel?
Cardinal vowel is a noun.
What is the plural of cardinal vowel?
The plural of cardinal vowel is cardinal vowels.

Words near cardinal vowel in the dictionary

  1. cardinal variables
  2. cardinal vein
  3. cardinal veins
  4. cardinal virtue
  5. cardinal virtues
  6. cardinal vowel
  7. cardinal vowels
  8. cardinal-nephew
  9. cardinal-nephews
  10. cardinalate
  11. cardinalates

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cardinal vowel (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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