syllable - Meaning and Examples

Meaning of 'syllable' (Webster Dictionary)

1 . Syllable

[ n.]

- An elementary sound, or a combination of elementary sounds, uttered together, or with a single effort or impulse of the voice, and constituting a word or a part of a word. In other terms, it is a vowel or a diphtong, either by itself or flanked by one or more consonants, the whole produced by a single impulse or utterance. One of the liquids, l, m, n, may fill the place of a vowel in a syllable. Adjoining syllables in a word or phrase need not to be marked off by a pause, but only by such an abatement and renewal, or reenforcement, of the stress as to give the feeling of separate impulses. See Guide to Pronunciation, /275.
- In writing and printing, a part of a word, separated from the rest, and capable of being pronounced by a single impulse of the voice. It may or may not correspond to a syllable in the spoken language.
- A small part of a sentence or discourse; anything concise or short; a particle.

2 . Syllable

[ v. t.]

- To pronounce the syllables of; to utter; to articulate.

Meaning of 'syllable' (Princeton's WordNet)

1 . syllable

[ n]

Meaning (1):
- a unit of spoken language larger than a phoneme

Example in sentence:

the word `pocket' has two syllables

Nearby Words:

syle syllabaria syllabarium syllabary syllabe syllabi syllabic syllabical syllabically syllabicate

See 'syllable' also in:

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Nonsense syllables
Three-letter combinations like ZEJ and TUZ that have no meaning for the subject (at least in English!), which are used in studies of memory is called nonsense syllables.

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