Word of the Day

: August 26, 2016

guttural

adjective GUTT-uh-rul

What It Means

1 : articulated in the throat

2 : velar

3 : being or marked by utterance that is strange, unpleasant, or disagreeable

guttural in Context

The only response we could get from him was an inarticulate guttural grunt.

"The guttural yells echoing off New Jersey's Lake Mercer conveyed the gravity of college rowing's biggest day Sunday: the Intercollegiate Rowing Championship." — Brian Towey, The Seattle Times, 6 June 2016

Did You Know?

Though it is now used to describe many sounds or utterances which strike the listener as harsh or disagreeable, the adjective guttural was originally applied only to sounds and utterances produced in the throat. This is reflected in the word's Latin root—guttur, meaning "throat." Despite the similarity in sound, guttural is not related to the English word gutter, which comes (by way of Anglo-French) from Latin gutta, meaning "drop."