noun
- a speech sound produced by forcing air through a narrow opening in the mouth
Usage: linguistics
adjective
- relating to or denoting a speech sound produced by forcing air through a narrow opening
Usage: linguistics
Examples
- The ‘f’ sound in ‘fish’ is a spirant consonant.
- Spirant sounds include ‘s’, ‘sh’, and ‘th’.
- The linguist explained how spirant consonants differ from stops.
- In phonetics class, we studied various spirant sounds.
- The spirant nature of the ‘v’ sound makes it continuous.
- She analyzed the spirant qualities of different languages.