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

swale

/sweɪl/ noun, proper noun

Forms swales swaling swaled

  1. noun A low tract of moist or marshy land.
  2. noun A long narrow and shallow trough between ridges on a beach, running parallel to the coastline.
  3. noun A shallow troughlike depression created to carry water during rainstorms or snow melts; a drainage ditch.
  4. noun Bioswale, a shallow trough dug into the land on contour (horizontally with no slope), whose purpose is to allow water time to percolate into the soil.
  5. noun A shallow, usually grassy depression sloping downward from a plains upland meadow or level vegetated ridgetop.
  6. noun (UK, dialectal) A gutter in a candle.
  7. proper noun A river, a tributary of the Ure in North Yorkshire, England.
  8. proper noun A strait between the Isle of Sheppey and the Kentish mainland; in full, The Swale.
  9. proper noun A local government district with borough status in Kent, England, created in 1974 with its headquarters in Sittingbourne and named after the channel.

Etymology

Possibly from Middle English swale (“a shady place, a shadow”), perhaps of North Germanic origin; akin to Old Norse svalr (“cool, fresh”), Icelandic svalir (“a balcony running along a wall”).

See sweal.

From Old English *swalwe (“rushing water”), which could be related to swealwe. Also compare the proper noun Swallow.

Webster’s 1913

  1. noun A valley or low place; a tract of low, and usually wet, land; a moor; a fen. [Prov. Eng. & Local, U.S.]
  2. verb To melt and waste away; to singe. See Sweal, v.
  3. noun A gutter in a candle. [Prov. Eng.]

Etymology [Cf. Icel. svalr cool, svala to cool.]

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