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

skein

/skeɪn/ noun, verb

Forms skeins skeining skeined skain skean

  1. noun A quantity of thread, yarn, etc., wound on a reel then removed and loosely knotted into an oblong shape; a skein of cotton is formed by eighty turns of thread around a reel with a fifty-four inch diameter.
  2. noun (ichthyology) The membrane of a fish ovary.
  3. noun (UK, dialectal, ornithology, collective) A group of wildfowl (for example, geese or swans) in flight.
  4. noun (obsolete, biochemistry, cytology, also attributive) Synonym of spireme (“the tangled mass of strands of chromatin seen in the early stages of mitosis, originally believed to be a single continuous strand (or two in a diploid cell, etc.)”).
  5. noun A tangle, a weave, a web.
  6. noun (sports) A winning streak.
  7. noun (US, radio, television, dated) A series created by a web (“major broadcasting network”).
  8. verb To weave or wind (thread, yarn, etc.) into a skein (noun etymology 1, noun sense 1).
  9. verb (figurative) To intertwine or weave (something) with another thing.
  10. noun A thin strip of an osier (“long, pliable twig from a plant, usually a willow”) used in basketmaking.
  11. noun (US, road transport, dated) A metallic strengthening band or thimble on the wooden arm of an axle of a wagon.

Synonyms

spireme

Etymology

The noun is derived from Middle English skaine, skayne (“quantity of string, thread, etc., wound on a reel; the string, thread, etc., so wound”), from Old French escaigne (modern French écagne, écaigne (Picardy)); further etymology uncertain, probably from Proto-Celtic, from Proto-Indo-European *skend- (“to split off”).
The verb is derived from noun.
* Irish scáinne (“skein, clew”)

From Dutch scheen (“strip of metal or wood; (anatomy) shin”), from Middle Dutch schene, from Old Dutch *skina, from Proto-West Germanic *skinu (“bar; track; (anatomy) shin; spine”), from Proto-Germanic *skinō (“piece; plate; rim; (anatomy) shinbone”), probably from Proto-Indo-European *skey- (“to dissect; to split”). Doublet of shin.

Webster’s 1913

  1. noun A quantity of yarn, thread, or the like, put up together, after it is taken from the reel, --usually tied in a sort of knot.
  2. noun A metallic strengthening band or thimble on the wooden arm of an axle. Knight.
  3. noun A flight of wild fowl (wild geese or the like). [Prov. Eng.]

Etymology [OE. skeyne, OF. escaigne, F. écagne, probably of Celtic origin; cf. Ir. sgainne, Gael. sgeinnidh thread, small twine; or perhaps the English word is immediately from Celtic.]

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