Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use syllable in a sentence

40 example sentences · noun, verb

Syllable means a unit of human speech which often forms words corresponding to one opening of the mouth; a vowel and its surrounding consonants. Example: “In the word "careful", the accent is placed on the first syllable.”

Examples of syllable by meaning

nounA unit of human speech which often forms words corresponding to one opening of the mouth; a vowel and its surrounding...

  • I wanted to look up velleity and quotidian and memorize the fuckers for all time, spell them, learn them, pronounce them syllable by syllable—vocalize, phonate, utter the sounds, say the words for all they're worth.2007, Don DeLillo, Underworld: A Novel, New York, N.Y.: Scribner Classics, →ISBN, page 543

More sentences with syllable

  • In the word "careful", the accent is placed on the first syllable.From the entry accent
  • "Naïve" takes an umlaut because it is pronounced as two syllables.From the entry umlaut
  • Some people put the stress on the first syllable of “controversy”; others put it on the second.From the entry stress
  • “Emphasis” is stressed on the first syllable, but “emphatic” is stressed on the second.From the entry stress
  • Ben suffers from hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia, so he seldom uses words of more than three syllables.From the entry hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia
  • According to the syllable-timed hypothesis, Spanish syllables as staccato.From the entry staccato
  • The word minimalism is stressed on its propreantepenultimate syllable.From the entry propreantepenultimate
  • You must enunciate all the syllables.From the entry enunciate
  • When we type the syllable "shi" in pinyin, we should always remember to put its tone number after it to avoid confusion.From the entry tone number
  • When this happens in an unstressed syllable, the pseudovowel disappears, poltxe.2024 August 27, William S. Annis, “A Reference Grammar of Na’vi”, in Learn Na'vi, archived from the original on 02 Jun 2025, page 14. From the entry consonantal
  • A sigh slipped between her teeth as she razor-bladed each syllable with her tongue.2018, Ray Hudson, Ivory and Paper: Adventures In and Out of Time, page 17. From the entry razor-blade
  • “It elongates the word, it adds an extra syllable to the word, it emphasizes the word.2015 December 7, Julie Beck, “The Linguistics of 'YouTube Voice'”, in The Atlantic. From the entry epenthetic
  • We measured the duration, interelement interval, peak frequency and bandwidth of echolocation pulses and distress syllables.2015 July 17, “Situational and Age-Dependent Decision Making during Life Threatening Distress in Myotis macrodactylus”, in PLOS ONE, →DOI. From the entry interelement
  • Em-il-y, three syllables, like a knock on the door of destiny.2010, Joanne Harris, blueeyedboy, Doubleday,, →ISBN, page 102. From the entry kylie
  • Many Native American songs employ vocables, syllables that do not have referential meaning.a. 2010, Victoria Lindsay Levine, Native American Music, Encyclopaedia Britannica. From the entry vocable
  • In the west of Ireland by the way Eneas is three syllables, En-ee-as.2008, Sebastian Barry, The Secret Scripture, Faber and Faber, →ISBN, page 33. From the entry Eneas
  • The person points to each square while uttering a single syllable.2007, Randall T. Schapiro, Managing the Symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis, page 54. From the entry paceboard
  • The echo of a song in its three syllables, an age-old lyric not yet faded from memory.1999, Andrew Pyper, chapter 44, in Lost Girls. From the entry caroline
  • The third syllable of provided is ed, and therefore the verb is not a polysyllable.1998, Albert Joseph, Put It In Writing, page 81. From the entry polysyllable
  • In Greek the main stress falls on the antepaenultimate syllable, in French on the last syllable.1997 April 17th, Marianne Ahrne, rec.gardens.roses, “Re: Unusual colors”, (see the original message). From the entry antepaenultimate
  • Proterokinetic ('earlier-mobile'): the accent moves between the first syllable and the stem.1995, Andrew L. Sihler, New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin, Oxford University Press, page 279. From the entry proterokinetic
  • Amphikinetic ('both ends mobile'): the accent moves between the first syllable (root) and the case-markers.1995, Andrew L. Sihler, New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin, Oxford University Press, page 279. From the entry amphikinetic
  • Each syllable, screamed by a hysteric caller in the world's last round of kick-the-can.1994, Richard Powers, Operation Wandering Soul, HarperCollins, →ISBN, page 232. From the entry kick-the-can
  • "Thank you for your donation," the girl says, slurring the words together into a single syllable.1992, Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash, page 182. From the entry slur
  • Maybe you've been put off by all the syllables that hang around veal.1990, Cincinnati Magazine, volume 23, number 5. From the entry piccata
  • The first syllable, ko, can mean "to take turns;" the second syllable, ban, means "watchperson" or "guard."1988 February 16, Katherine Bishop, “Latest Japanese Import Goes on Patrol”, in The New York Times. From the entry watchperson
  • He opened his mouth as in a dream, shaping it around the first barbaric syllable.1983, Terry Pratchett, The Colour of Magic, published 2022, page 134. From the entry unbidden
  • The latter feature indicates that a Portuguese consonant cannot constitute the nucleus of a syllable.1981, Milton Mariano Azevedo, A Contrastive Phonology of Portuguese and English, page 31. From the entry Portuguese
  • Note the caesura media; the syllable preceding it is perispomene, as is very often the case.1980, J[an] C[oenraad] Kamerbeek, “Third Epeisodion 865-1080”, in The Plays of Sophocles, part VI (The Philoctetes), Leiden: E. J. Brill…. From the entry perispomene
  • A noted newscastress pronounces 'duchess' with an accent on the second syllable.1978, Richard Buckle, U and non-U revisited, page 86. From the entry newscastress
  • This new term, then, is echeme, defined as: a first-order assemblage of syllables.[1976, W. B. Broughton, “Proposal for a new term ‘echeme’ to replace ‘chirp’ in animal acoustics”, in Physiological Entomology, volume 1…. From the entry echeme
  • Her squawk came out in two distinct syllables, rather like the way I had been syllabificating “Rooo-beee!”1974, Joan McIntyre, Mind in the Waters: A Book to Celebrate the Consciousness of Whales and Dolphins, Scribner, page 188. From the entry syllabificate
  • The President used "words of one syllable" to convey his insistence that Poland be "free and independent".1972 December 27, Alden Whitman, “Obituary: Harry S. Truman, Decisive President”, in New York Times, retrieved 21 Sep 2012. From the entry words of one syllable
  • The only rule (followed only by purists) was that the seventh, caesural, syllable must bear a beat.1964, Vladimir Nabokov, “The Origination of Metrical Verse in Russia”, in Notes on Prosody […] (Bollingen Series; LXXIIa), New York, N.Y.…. From the entry caesural
  • The Greeks called this love storge (two syllables and the g is "hard").[1960, C[live] S[taples] Lewis, “Affection”, in The Four Loves, London: Geoffrey Bles, →OCLC, page 42. From the entry storge
  • The perispomene (῀) is an accent like any other, on syllables originally long.1956, Ary H. Crooson, “Greek at a Glance”, in Constantine Divry, editor, Divry’s Guide to Greece and Information Manual, New York, N.Y.…. From the entry perispomene
  • Incontiguously (accent on tig; the rest of the syllables slighted) means in an incontiguous manner.1915, Josephine Turck Baker, Correct English, volumes 16-17, page 182. From the entry slight
  • Felix propounded the story of the arrest, so far as might be, in words of one syllable.1915, John Galsworthy, chapter 22, in The Freelands. From the entry words of one syllable
  • The disposition of the words, syllables, and letters is much as my copy represents.1905 April-June, Robert Burkitt, “A Kekchí Will of the Sixteenth Century”, in American Anthropologist, volume 7, number 2, page 272. From the entry misunite

Meaning of syllable

  1. noun A unit of human speech which often forms words corresponding to one opening of the mouth; a vowel and its surrounding consonants.
  2. noun The written representation of a given pronounced syllable.
  3. noun A small part of a sentence or discourse; anything concise or short; a particle.

Full definition of syllable

Questions about syllable in a sentence

How do you use syllable in a sentence?
Syllable is used as a noun and verb. For example: “In the word "careful", the accent is placed on the first syllable.”
What is a short sentence with syllable?
“You must enunciate all the syllables.”
What does syllable mean?
Syllable means a unit of human speech which often forms words corresponding to one opening of the mouth; a vowel and its surrounding consonants.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: syllable (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use syllable in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/syllable. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.