Word.ws English Dictionary

prerhotic

prerhotic adjective: occurring before the letter ⟨r⟩ or before any one of the sounds that letter tends to represent (e.g., [r], [ɽ], [ɹ], [ɻ], [ʀ], [ʁ], etc.).

Adjective

prerhotic (not comparable)

  1. (rare) Occurring before the letter ⟨r⟩ or before any one of the sounds that letter tends to represent (e.g., [r], [ɽ], [ɹ], [ɻ], [ʀ], [ʁ], etc.).
    • While /ɛ/ and /ɪ/ lost their distinctiveness in pre-rhotic, tautosyllabic positions, the basic distinction back ~ front was maintained in forms such as the following: fern [fɛɹn], General IrE [fərn]; turn [tʌɹn], General IrE [tərn].1986, Raymond Hickey, “Possible phonological parallels between Irish and Irish English”, in English World-Wide, VII, № 1, page 9, § 1.6.2
    • 1993 Summer, Ralph H. Emerson, “The Distribution of Eighteenth-Century Prerhotic O-Phonemes in Walker’s Critical Pronouncing Dictionary” in American Speech LXVIII, № 2, pages 115–138

Forms of prerhotic

alternative formpre-rhotic

Origin of prerhotic

From pre- + rhotic.

Questions about prerhotic

What does prerhotic mean?
Prerhotic means occurring before the letter ⟨r⟩ or before any one of the sounds that letter tends to represent (e.g., [r], [ɽ], [ɹ], [ɻ], [ʀ], [ʁ], etc.).
What part of speech is prerhotic?
Prerhotic is an adjective.

Words near prerhotic in the dictionary

  1. prerevisionist
  2. prerevival
  3. prerevolution
  4. prerevolutionary
  5. prerheumatic
  6. prerhotic
  7. preribosomal
  8. preribosome
  9. preribosomes
  10. preride
  11. prerift

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: prerhotic (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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