Word.ws English Dictionary

schwə

/ʃwə/

schwə is the alternative form of schwa.

Meaning of schwa

Noun

schwa (plural schwas)

  1. An indeterminate central vowel sound as the "a" in "about", represented as /ə/ in IPA.
    • The participle has also, owing to the accent, the lightest possible forms; but here there was no reduplication, and so in class I. the "schwa" took the form e before single mutes or fricatives, and elsewhere o.1882, B. W. Wells, “The Ablaut in English”, in Transactions of the American Philological Association, page 67
  2. The name of the Latin script letter Ə/ə.

See all 3 meanings of schwa

Forms of schwə

pluralschwəs

Origin of schwə

From English phonetic spelling of the vowel sound /ə/, with "sch" representing the "sh" sound /ʃ/.

Questions about schwə

What is schwə the alternative form of?
Schwə is the alternative form of schwa.
How do you pronounce schwə?
Schwə is pronounced /ʃwə/.

Words near schwə in the dictionary

  1. schwus
  2. Schwyz
  3. Schwyzer Dutsch
  4. Schwyzertütsch
  5. Schwäbisch Hall
  6. schwə
  7. schynbald
  8. schynbalds
  9. schyphozoan
  10. Schönbergian
  11. Schöneberg

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: schwə (page history and authors); schwa (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: “schwə.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/schw%C9%99. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.