long a
long a noun: the vowel sound in the words game and cake; /eɪ/. (The presence of a long vowel is often signaled in spelling by a silent e that follows it, as in the examples here, or by the fact that a subsequent consonant is single rather than doubled, as for example in gaming versus gamming).
Noun
long a (plural long a's)
- The vowel sound in the words game and cake; /eɪ/. (The presence of a long vowel is often signaled in spelling by a silent e that follows it, as in the examples here, or by the fact that a subsequent consonant is single rather than doubled, as for example in gaming versus gamming).
- Antonyms:
- short a
- The vowel sound in the English words bath and castle when pronounced with an open back unrounded vowel (/ɑː/); associated with southern England accents.
- Synonyms:
- broad a
- Antonyms:
- flat a, short a
Synonyms of long a
- broad a
Antonyms
- short a
- flat a
Forms of long a
| plural | long a's |
|---|
Questions about long a
- What does long a mean?
- Long a means the vowel sound in the words game and cake; /eɪ/. (The presence of a long vowel is often signaled in spelling by a silent e that follows it, as in the examples here, or by the fact that a subsequent consonant is single rather than doubled, as for example in gaming versus gamming).
- What part of speech is long a?
- Long a is a noun.
- What is the plural of long a?
- The plural of long a is long a's.
Words near long a in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: long a (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:
Cite this entry: “long a.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/long_a. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.