Klryz
Pronunciation guide: IPA symbols, stress and word endings

Vowels

iːseeɪsite / ɛbedæcat
ɑːfatherɒhot (UK)ɔːlawʊput
uːtooʌcupɜːbirdəabout
eɪdayaɪmyɔɪboyaʊnow
əʊ / oʊgo (UK / US)ɪəneareəhairʊətour

Consonants that look unusual

θthinðthisʃsheʒmeasure
tʃchurchdʒjudgeŋsingjyes

p b t d k g f v s z h m n l r w sound as in ordinary English spelling.

Marks

  • ˈ main stress, before the stressed syllable: /ˈwɔːtə/ water · ˌ lighter (secondary) stress: /ˌʌndəˈstænd/ understand
  • ː a long vowel · (r) an r said only in accents that pronounce it (most American, Scottish, Irish)

Common word endings

  • -s / -es (plurals; he/she form of verbs): /s/ after voiceless sounds (cats), /z/ after voiced (dogs), /ɪz/ after s, z, sh, ch, j sounds (buses, watches). Spelling: -es after s, x, z, ch, sh; consonant + y → -ies (city → cities).
  • -ed (past): /t/ after voiceless sounds (walked), /d/ after voiced (played), /ɪd/ after t or d (wanted). Spelling: love → loved, stop → stopped, carry → carried.
  • -ing: make → making, run → running, see → seeing.
  • Irregular: go, went, gone · be, was, been · see, saw, seen · man → men · child → children · mouse → mice.
  • Older (King James) forms: -eth = -s (he loveth = he loves) · -est with “thou” (thou lovest) · spake = spoke.

English Dictionary · 107,383 entries · Sources & licences

chestnut

UK /ˈt͡ʃɛs(t)nʌt/ · US /ˈt͡ʃɛs(t)ˌnʌt/ noun, adjective, proper noun

Forms chestnuts chesnut

  1. noun (countable) An edible nut (technically a fruit) of the Spanish chestnut or sweet chestnut tree (Castanea sativa); also (chiefly preceded by a descriptive word), a nut from a related shrub or tree; or a similar nut from an unrelated plant.
  2. noun (countable) In full chestnut tree: the shrub or tree that bears this nut, the Spanish chestnut or sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa); also (chiefly preceded by a descriptive word), a shrub or tree of the genus Castanea.
  3. noun (uncountable) Wood of a chestnut tree.
  4. noun (uncountable) A dark, reddish-brown colour, like that of chestnut fruit (noun sense 1).
  5. noun (countable) A horse with a reddish-brown coat, mane and tail.
  6. noun (countable) An oval or round horny plate located on the inner side of the leg of a horse or other equines, which is thought by some people to correspond with the thumbnail of other animals.
  7. noun (countable, figurative) Chiefly in old chestnut: a joke, meme, phrase, ploy, etc. which has been repeated so often as to have grown ineffective or tiresome; a cliché.
  8. adjective Of a deep reddish-brown colour, like that of a chestnut fruit (noun sense 1). “chestnut hair”
  9. proper noun A surname.

Synonyms

Spanish chestnut sweet chestnut night eye platitude castaneous chestnut tree

Etymology

The noun is a contraction of chest(en) (“(obsolete) chestnut tree; fruit of this tree, chestnut”) + nut. Chesten is a late variant of chesteine (obsolete), from Middle English chesten, chesteine, chasteine, chesteyne (“chestnut tree (Castanea sativa); fruit of this tree; wood of this tree”), from Old French chastaigne, chastaine (French châtaigne), from Latin castanea (“chestnut tree; fruit of this tree”) (whence Old English ċisten), from Ancient Greek κᾰστᾰ́νειᾰ (kăstắneiă), a variant of κᾰ́στᾰνᾰ (kắstănă, “sweet chestnut”); for further etymology, see that entry. Doublet of castanet.
Noun sense 4 (“joke, phrase, etc., which has been repeated so often as to have grown ineffective or tiresome”) may refer to an 1816 play, The Broken Sword, by William Dimond (1781 – c. 1837), in which one character begins to relate a story in which a boy slips down from a cork tree, and another interrupts him to say that he had previously repeated the story many times, and always mentioned a chestnut tree.
The adjective is probably from an attributive use of the noun; compare French (of hair) châtain (“chestnut”) (from châtaigne (“a chestnut”)) and marron (“brown”) (from marron (“a horse chestnut or chestnut”)).

Webster’s 1913

  1. noun The edible nut of a forest tree (Castanea vesce) of Europe and America. Commonly two or more of the nuts grow in a prickly bur.
  2. noun The tree itself, or its light, coarse-grained timber, used for ornamental work, furniture, etc.
  3. adjective Of or pertaining of a chestnut; of a reddish brown color; as, chestnut curls.

Etymology [For chesten-nut; OE. chestein, chesten, chastein, chestnut, fr. AS. cisten in cistenbeám chestnut tree, influenced by OF. chastaigne, F. châtaigne, both the AS. and the F. words coming from L. castanea a chestnut, Gr. Castanets.]

Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “chestnut”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details