Word.ws English Dictionary

lenite

/ˈliːnaɪt/

lenite verb: to cause (a consonant) to undergo lenition.

Verb

lenite (third-person singular simple present lenites, present participle leniting, simple past and past participle lenited)

  1. (transitive) To cause (a consonant) to undergo lenition.
    • This environment lenites "m" to "mh".
  2. (intransitive) To undergo lenition.
    • "M" lenites to "mh".
    • The initial g- in several of the forms is due to reanalysis from syntactic constructions in which the initial k- preceded by a vowel regularly lenites.2025, Cid Swanenvleugel, The Pre-Roman Elements of the Sardinian Lexicon, page 265

Forms of lenite

third-person singular presentlenites
present participleleniting
past participlelenited
pastlenited

Origin of lenite

Back-formation from lenition.

Words formed from lenite

Questions about lenite

What does lenite mean?
Lenite means to cause (a consonant) to undergo lenition.
What part of speech is lenite?
Lenite is a verb.
How do you pronounce lenite?
Lenite is pronounced /ˈliːnaɪt/.
What is the past tense of lenite?
The past tense of lenite is lenited.

Words near lenite in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lenite (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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