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

surd

UK /sɜːd/ · US /sɝd/ noun, adjective

Forms surds

  1. noun (arithmetic) An irrational number, especially one expressed using the √ symbol.
  2. noun (linguistics) A voiceless consonant.
  3. adjective (obsolete) Lacking the sense of hearing; deaf.
  4. adjective (obsolete) unheard
  5. adjective (mathematics) Involving surds, or irrational numbers; not capable of being expressed in rational numbers. “a surd expression or quantity; a surd number”
  6. adjective (phonetics) unvoiced; voiceless

Synonyms

voiceless consonant unvoiced voiceless hard

Antonyms

sonant

Etymology

First attested in the mid 16th century from Latin surdus (“deaf, mute”), used in mathematics for “irrational,” reflecting ἄλογος (álogos, “irrational, speechless”) as found in Euclid, apparently transmitted via Arabic جِذْر أَصَمّ (jiḏr ʔaṣamm, “deaf root”). The phonetic sense, “voiceless,” emerged in the 18th century. Doublet of surdo.

Webster’s 1913

  1. adjective Net having the sense of hearing; deaf. [Obs.] "A surd . . .
  2. adjective Unheard. [Obs.] Kenrick.
  3. noun A quantity which can not be expressed by rational numbers; thus, *2 is a surd.
  4. noun A surd element of speech. See Surd, a., 4.

Etymology [L. surdus deaf (whence the meaning, deaf to reason, irrational), perhaps akin to E. swart. Cf. Sordine.]

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