Word.ws English Dictionary

line-loin merger

line-loin merger noun: the phonemic merger between the diphthongs /aɪ/ and /ɔɪ/ that occurs for speakers of Southern English English, Irish English, Newfoundland English, and Caribbean English making "line" and "loin" homophones.

Noun

line-loin merger

  1. The phonemic merger between the diphthongs /aɪ/ and /ɔɪ/ that occurs for speakers of Southern English English, Irish English, Newfoundland English, and Caribbean English making "line" and "loin" homophones.
    • The most frequently paraded example of apparent merger in English in the Labovian literature is the line—loin merger in Essex, England (see Labov, Yaeger, and Steiner 1972; Nunberg and Labov 1972; Nunberg 1980); the label stands for the coalescence of /oy/ and /ay/.1991, Birch Moonwomon, Sound Change in San Francisco English, volume 1, page 57

Questions about line-loin merger

What does line-loin merger mean?
Line-loin merger means the phonemic merger between the diphthongs /aɪ/ and /ɔɪ/ that occurs for speakers of Southern English English, Irish English, Newfoundland English, and Caribbean English making "line" and "loin" homophones.
What part of speech is line-loin merger?
Line-loin merger is a noun.

Words near line-loin merger in the dictionary

  1. line-height
  2. line-heights
  3. line-item veto
  4. line-item vetoes
  5. line-item vetos
  6. line-loin merger
  7. line-of-battle ship
  8. line-of-sight
  9. line-out
  10. line-outs
  11. line-up

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: line-loin merger (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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