syllable
/ˈsɪl.ə.bəl/ noun, verb
Forms syllables syllabling syllabled syllab syllabe
- noun (linguistics) A unit of human speech which often forms words corresponding to one opening of the mouth; a vowel and its surrounding consonants.
- noun The written representation of a given pronounced syllable.
- noun A small part of a sentence or discourse; anything concise or short; a particle.
- verb (transitive, poetic) To utter in syllables.
Etymology
From Middle English syllable, sillable, syllabylle, sylabul, from Anglo-Norman sillable, from Old French sillebe, from Latin syllaba, from Ancient Greek συλλαβή (sullabḗ), from συλλαμβάνω (sullambánō, “to gather together”), from συν- (sun-, “together”) + λαμβάνω (lambánō, “to take”).
Webster’s 1913
- noun An elementary sound, or a combination of elementary sounds, uttered together, or with a single effort or impulse of the voice, and constituting a word or a part of a word. In other terms, it is a vowel or a diphtong, either by itself or flanked by one or more consonants, the whole produced by a single impulse or utterance. One of the liquids, l, m, n, may fill the place of a vowel in a syllable.
- noun In writing and printing, a part of a word, separated from the rest, and capable of being pronounced by a single impulse of the voice. It may or may not correspond to a syllable in the spoken language.
- verb To pronounce the syllables of; to utter; to articulate. Milton.
Etymology [OE. sillable, OF. sillabe, F. syllabe, L. syllaba, Gr. labh, rabh. Cf. Lemma, Dilemma.]
Sources: Wiktionary · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “syllable”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details