Word.ws English Dictionary

long vowels

long vowels is the plural of long vowel.

Meaning of long vowel

Noun

long vowel (plural long vowels)

  1. A vowel which is normally pronounced somewhat longer than other vowels (usually around 1½ to 2½ times the length of a short vowel); represented in the IPA by the addition of a colon-like symbol (ː, triangular colon), such as /aː/.
  2. Any of the vowels or diphthongs resulting from the Great Vowel Shift's effect on Middle English's original long vowels, and best exhibited in the names of the vowel letters A, E, I, O, U. In American lexicography their pronunciation is indicated by a macron, as, ē.

Questions about long vowels

What is long vowels the plural of?
Long vowels is the plural of long vowel.

Words near long vowels in the dictionary

  1. long vacs
  2. Long Valley
  3. long vax
  4. long view
  5. long vowel
  6. long vowels
  7. Long War
  8. Long Wat
  9. long wave
  10. long waves
  11. long way around

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: long vowels (page history and authors); long 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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Cite this entry: “long vowels.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/long_vowels. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.