Word.ws English Dictionary

lenis

/ˈliːnɪs/

lenis adjective: relatively weakly articulated, hence unaspirated and possibly voiced; especially as compared to the others of a group of homorganic consonants.

Adjective

lenis (not comparable)

  1. Relatively weakly articulated, hence unaspirated and possibly voiced; especially as compared to the others of a group of homorganic consonants.
    • Unaspirated [p] is lenis in Danish, the corresponding fortis consonant being [pʰ]. The same sound is fortis in French, the corresponding lenis consonant being [b].
    • All vowels, whether short or complex, are relatively shorter when followed by a fortis consonant and relatively longer when followed by a lenis one or, for those where this is possible, when no consonant follows (in free or unchecked syllables).2004, Stephan Gramley, Michael Pätzold, A Survey of Modern English, Routledge, →ISBN, page 80
    Synonyms:
    lax
    Antonyms:
    fortis

Noun

lenis (plural lenes)

  1. A lenis consonant.

Proper noun capitalized: Lenis

Lenis (plural Lenises)

  1. A surname.

Synonyms of lenis

Antonyms

Forms of lenis

Noun
plurallenes
Proper noun
pluralLenises

Origin of lenis

Borrowed from Latin lēnis (“soft, smooth”).

Words formed from lenis

Phrases with lenis

Words that rhyme with lenis

Questions about lenis

What does lenis mean?
Lenis means relatively weakly articulated, hence unaspirated and possibly voiced; especially as compared to the others of a group of homorganic consonants.
What part of speech is lenis?
Lenis can be an adjective, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce lenis?
Lenis is pronounced /ˈliːnɪs/.

Words near lenis in the dictionary

  1. Leninists
  2. Leninite
  3. Leninites
  4. Leninsk
  5. leniolisib
  6. lenis
  7. Lenises
  8. lenite
  9. lenited
  10. lenites
  11. lenities

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lenis (page history and authors); Lenis (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-lenis.wav.

Cite this entry: “lenis.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lenis. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.