Word.ws English Dictionary

triphthong

/ˈtɹɪfˌθɒŋ(ɡ)/US/ˈtɹɪfˌθɔŋ/

triphthong noun: a monosyllabic vowel combination usually involving a quick but smooth movement from one vowel to another that passes over a third one.

Noun

triphthong (plural triphthongs)

  1. A monosyllabic vowel combination usually involving a quick but smooth movement from one vowel to another that passes over a third one.
    • In Lang Belta vowels usually appear preceding or following a consonant (see previous examples), and as of now no occurrence of diphthongs or triphthongs has been attested.2021 October 5, Gessica Puccini, “Lang Belta: the Belter language from SYFY/Amazon’s The Expanse”, in Lingoblog
  2. A disyllabic sequence of a vowel, a semivowel, and a vowel.
    • Before moving on to a solution, it may be worth emphasizing that nouns of the صلوه type originally contained a triphthong. […] In addition to evidence from the Safaitic inscriptions, the discovery of the Graeco-Arabic inscription A1 (Al-Jallad and al-Manaser 2015), where the verb ’tw ‘he came’ is...2017, Ahmad Al-Jallad, Was it sūrat al-baqárah? Evidence for antepenultimate stress in the Quranic Consonantal Text and its Relevance for صلوه Type Nouns

triphthong meaning in Tamil, Tagalog, Arabic and Vietnamese

triphthong in Tamil

முக்கூட்டொலி, மூவுயிர்

triphthong in Tagalog

monosyllabic vowel combination involving movement from one vowel to another
katluang-patinig

triphthong in Arabic

monosyllabic vowel combination involving movement from one vowel to another
تْرِفْثُنْغ trifṯunḡ

triphthong in Vietnamese

monosyllabic vowel combination involving movement from one vowel to another
nguyên âm ba

Forms of triphthong

pluraltriphthongs

Origin of triphthong

From the Ancient Greek τρίφθογγος (tríphthongos, “triphthong, having three voices”), from τρία (tría, “three”) + φθόγγος (phthóngos, “sound”).

Words formed from triphthong

Questions about triphthong

What does triphthong mean?
Triphthong means a monosyllabic vowel combination usually involving a quick but smooth movement from one vowel to another that passes over a third one.
What is triphthong in Tamil?
Triphthong in Tamil is முக்கூட்டொலி, மூவுயிர். See Triphthong meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is triphthong?
Triphthong is a noun.
How do you pronounce triphthong?
Triphthong is pronounced /ˈtɹɪfˌθɒŋ(ɡ)/ (UK).
What is the plural of triphthong?
The plural of triphthong is triphthongs.

Words near triphthong in the dictionary

  1. triphosphorylation
  2. triphosphorylations
  3. triphoton
  4. triphotons
  5. triphthaloylbenzene
  6. triphthong
  7. triphthongal
  8. triphthongization
  9. triphthongize
  10. triphthongized
  11. triphthongizes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: triphthong (page history and authors); triphthong (Tamil Wiktionary) (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-triphthong.wav.

Cite this entry: “triphthong.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/triphthong. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.