Word.ws English Dictionary

umlaute

UK/ˈʊm.laʊt.ə/

umlaute is the plural of umlaut.

Meaning of umlaut

Noun

umlaut (plural umlauts or umlaute)

  1. An assimilatory process whereby a vowel is pronounced more like a following vocoid that is separated by one or more consonants.
    • In fits of concealed despair that went unnoticed even by those close enough to touch, Julien cursed the language of umlauts, eszetts, and gerunds.1997, Matthew Piepenburg, Time and the Maiden, →ISBN, page 62
  2. The umlaut process (as above) that occurred historically in Germanic languages whereby back vowels became front vowels when followed by syllable containing a front vocoid (e.g. Germanic lūsiz > Old English lȳs(i) > Modern English lice).
  3. A vowel so assimilated.
  4. The diacritical mark ( ¨ ) placed over a vowel when it indicates a (rounded) front vowel
  5. (informal) Synonym of diaeresis.
    • "Naïve" takes an umlaut because it is pronounced as two syllables.
    Synonyms:
    diaeresis

See all 7 meanings of umlaut

Origin of umlaute

From German Umlaute, from um (“around”) + Laute (“sounds”).

Questions about umlaute

What is umlaute the plural of?
Umlaute is the plural of umlaut.
How do you pronounce umlaute?
Umlaute is pronounced /ˈʊm.laʊt.ə/ (UK).

Words near umlaute in the dictionary

  1. Umlands
  2. Umlauf
  3. Umlaufs
  4. umlaut
  5. umlautable
  6. umlaute
  7. umlauted
  8. umlauting
  9. umlautless
  10. umlautlessness
  11. umlauts

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: umlaute (page history and authors); umlaut (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: “umlaute.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/umlaute. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.