1. doubles or occurs in pairs
Usage: linguistics

1. consonant sounds that are pronounced for a longer duration, as if doubled
Usage: linguistics; phonetics

Examples

• The letter ‘t’ geminates in the word ‘butter’ in some dialects.
• Italian frequently geminates consonants in words like ‘bello’.
• The linguist studied how certain sounds geminate across languages.
• Geminates are common features in many world languages.
• The pronunciation geminates the ‘n’ sound in ‘cannot’.
• Students learned to identify geminates in their phonetics class.