vowel
/ˈvaʊ.əl/
More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations
also/vaʊl/
vowel noun: a sound produced by the vocal cords with relatively little restriction of the oral cavity, forming the prominent sound of a syllable.
Noun
vowel (plural vowels)
- A sound produced by the vocal cords with relatively little restriction of the oral cavity, forming the prominent sound of a syllable.
- Hawaiian has either five or twenty-five vowels, depending on how they are counted.
- Antonyms:
- consonant
- A letter or diacritic representing the sound of a vowel; in English, the vowels are a, e, i, o, u, y (sometimes), and w (rarely).
- The word facetiously is spelled with all six vowels in alphabetical order.
- The word cwm, borrowed from Welsh, is an example of the letter w serving as a vowel in English.
- Antonyms:
- consonant
Verb
vowel (third-person singular simple present vowels, present participle (US) voweling or (UK) vowelling, simple past and past participle (US) voweled or (UK) vowelled)
- To add vowel points to a consonantal script (e.g. niqqud in Hebrew or harakat in Arabic).
- However it should be vowelled – perhaps ‘Almaqah’ – his name seems to be composed of ‘Il’, the general name of the paramount Semitic deity […], plus another element that is possibly from the Sabaic verb wqh, ‘to command’ […].2019, Tim Mackintosh-Smith, Arabs, Yale University Press, page 52
vowel meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu
vowel in Hindi
- sound
- स्वर svar, सुर sur
vowel in Tamil
- letter
- உயிரெழுத்து uyireḻuttu
vowel in Marathi
- vowel
- स्वर svara
vowel in Urdu
- sound
- مُصَوِّت musavvit
More languagesFewer languages
- vowel in Bengali
- স্বর śor
- vowel in Telugu
- అచ్చు accu
- vowel in Malayalam
- സ്വരം svaraṁ
- vowel in Kannada
- ಸ್ವರ svara
- vowel in Punjabi
- ਸਵਰ savar
- vowel in Gujarati
- સ્વર svar
- vowel in Odia
- ସ୍ବରବର୍ଣ, ସ୍ୱରବର୍ଣ
- vowel in Sanskrit
- स्वर svara
- vowel in Assamese
- স্বৰবৰ্ণ soroborno, স্বৰ sor
- vowel in Tagalog
- patinig
- vowel in Arabic
- صَائِت ṣāʔit, مُصَوِّت muṣawwit, حَرَكَة ḥaraka, حَرْفُ مَدّ ḥarfu madd
- vowel in Malay
- bunyi hidup, vokal, huruf hidup
- vowel in Indonesian
- huruf hidup, vokal
- vowel in Persian
- مصوت mossavet
- vowel in Thai
- สระ sà, เสียงสระ
- vowel in Vietnamese
- nguyên âm, mẫu âm
- vowel in Myanmar
- သရ sa.ra.
Examples of vowel in a sentence
- The vowel of lot has a back vowel in most dialects of England.
- The English word dress has a front vowel in most dialects.
- The first vowel of support is reduced to schwa by most English speakers.
Synonyms of vowel
Antonyms
Forms of vowel
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | vowels |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | vowels |
| present participle US | voweling |
| present participle UK | vowelling |
| past participle US | voweled |
| past US | voweled |
| past participle UK | vowelled |
| past UK | vowelled |
Origin of vowel
From Middle English vowel, from Old French vouel, a variant of voyeul (whence French voyelle), from Latin vōcālis (“voiced”), itself a semantic loan of Koine Greek φωνῆεν (phōnêen). Doublet of vocal and vocalis.
Words formed from vowel
- back vowel
- cardinal vowel
- dark vowel
- disemvowel
- disemvowelment
- echo vowel
- envowel
- front vowel
- full vowel
- gliding vowel
- half-long vowel
- happy vowel
- inherent vowel
- intervowel
- intravowel
- lax vowel
- linking vowel
- long vowel
- long-vowel mark
- nasal vowel
- natural vowel
- neutral vowel
- nonvowel
- oral vowel
- overlong vowel
- prop vowel
- R-coloured vowel
- R-colored vowel
- reduced vowel
- rhotacized vowel
- rounded vowel
- semi-vowel
- semivowel
- short vowel
- tense vowel
- thematic vowel
- unrounded vowel
- vowel harmony
- vowelhood
- vowelish
- vowelism
- vowelist
- vowelization
- vowelisation
- vowelize
- vowelise
- vowel killer
- vowelless
- vowellike
- vowelling
- vowel lowering
- vowelly
- vowel mutation
- vowel point
- vowel pointing
- vowel quantity
- vowel reduction
- vowel rhyme
- vowel sign
- weak vowel merger
Phrases with vowel
Words that rhyme with vowel
Questions about vowel
- What does vowel mean?
- Vowel means a sound produced by the vocal cords with relatively little restriction of the oral cavity, forming the prominent sound of a syllable.
- What is vowel in Hindi?
- Vowel in Hindi is स्वर (svar), सुर (sur). See Vowel meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is vowel?
- Vowel can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce vowel?
- Vowel is pronounced /ˈvaʊ.əl/.
- What is the plural of vowel?
- The plural of vowel is vowels.
Words near vowel in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: vowel (page history and authors); स्वर (Marathi) (page history and authors); സ്വരം (Malayalam) (page history and authors); ಸ್ವರ (Kannada) (page history and authors); vowel (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); স্বৰ (Assamese) (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: en-us-vowel.ogg, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Back ache-vowel.wav.
Cite this entry: “vowel.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/vowel. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.