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

lisp

/lɪsp/ noun, verb, proper noun

Forms lisps lisping lisped lipsey lithp

  1. noun The act or a habit of lisping. “He used to have a terrible lisp before going to a speech therapist.”
  2. verb (intransitive) To pronounce the consonant ‘s’ imperfectly; to give ‘s’ and ‘z’ the sounds of ‘th’ (/θ/, /ð/). This is a speech impediment common among children. “Until the age of 10, Dominic would lisp, but this was fixed by a speech therapist.”
  3. verb (intransitive) To speak with imperfect articulation; to mispronounce, such as a child learning to talk.
  4. verb (intransitive, archaic) To speak hesitatingly and with a low voice, as if afraid.
  5. verb (intransitive, archaic) to express by the use of simple, childlike language.
  6. verb (intransitive, archaic) To speak with reserve or concealment; to utter timidly or confidentially. “to lisp treason”
  7. proper noun A functional programming language with a distinctive parenthesized syntax, much used in artificial intelligence.

Synonyms

list-processing language

Etymology

From Middle English lispen, lipsen, wlispen, from Old English *wlispian (attested in āwlyspian (“to lisp”)), from Old English wlisp, wlips (“stammering, lisping”, adjective), from Proto-Germanic *wlispaz (“lisping”), from Proto-Indo-European *wlis-, *wleys- (“rod”), from *wel- (“to turn, roll”). Cognate with Middle Low German wlispen (“to lisp”), Dutch lispen (“to lisp”), German lispeln (“to lisp”), Danish læspe (“to lisp”), Swedish läspa (“to lisp”).

A contraction of list processing.

Webster’s 1913

  1. verb To pronounce the sibilant letter s imperfectly; to give s and z the sound of th; --a defect common among children.
  2. verb To speak with imperfect articulation; to mispronounce, as a child learning to talk.
  3. verb To pronounce with a lisp.
  4. verb To utter with imperfect articulation; to express with words pronounced imperfectly or indistinctly, as a child speaks; hence, to express by the use of simple, childlike language.

Etymology [OE. lispen, lipsen, AS. wlisp stammering, lisping; akin to D. & OHG. lispen to lisp, G. lispeln, Sw. läspa, Dan. lespe.]

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