Word.ws English Dictionary

vocant

UK/ˈvəʊ.kənt//ˈvoʊ.kənt/

vocant noun: a vowel-like sound such as uttered by a preverbal infant.

Noun

vocant (plural vocants)

  1. A vowel-like sound such as uttered by a preverbal infant.
    • At an earlier stage still, during the first few months of life, the vowel-like and consonant-like sounds are usually so far removed from normal speech that even this convention is misleading. We will label these sounds vocants and closants and their transcription will be enclosed within double...[1981, J[ohn] A[ntony] M[ichael] Martin, “Vocal Behaviour and the Origins of Speech” (chapter 4), in Voice, Speech, and Language in the Child: Development and Disorder (Disorders of Human...
    • It is extremely difficult to identify the different vocants, partly because they are probably being produced in ways which differ from an adult speaker.2012, J. A. M. Martin, Voice, Speech, and Language in the Child, Springer, page 70

Examples of vocant in a sentence

  • We will label these sounds vocants and closants and their transcription will be enclosed within double square brackets e.g. bə.[1981, J[ohn] A[ntony] M[ichael] Martin, “Vocal Behaviour and the Origins of Speech” (chapter 4), in Voice, Speech, and Language in the...
  • In the first year of life, the most frequent vocalizations are low front, low back, and central vowel-like vocants.2022, Margaret Fish, Amy Skinder-Meredith, Here's How to Treat Childhood Apraxia of Speech, 3rd edition, page 207:

Forms of vocant

pluralvocants

Origin of vocant

Coined by British physician John Antony Michael Martin in 1981 (see quotation).

Questions about vocant

What does vocant mean?
Vocant means a vowel-like sound such as uttered by a preverbal infant.
How do you use vocant in a sentence?
We will label these sounds vocants and closants and their transcription will be enclosed within double square brackets e.g. bə.
What part of speech is vocant?
Vocant is a noun.
How do you pronounce vocant?
Vocant is pronounced /ˈvəʊ.kənt/ (UK).
What is the plural of vocant?
The plural of vocant is vocants.

Words near vocant in the dictionary

  1. vocalness
  2. vocaloid
  3. vocaloids
  4. vocals
  5. vocamine
  6. vocant
  7. vocants
  8. vocate
  9. vocated
  10. vocates
  11. vocating

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: vocant (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)-Naomi Persephone Amethyst (NaomiAmethyst)-vocant.wav.

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