Definition of vowel
1 : one of a class of speech sounds in the articulation of which the oral part of the breath channel is not blocked and is not constricted enough to cause audible friction; broadly : the one most prominent sound in a syllable
2 : a letter or other symbol representing a vowel —usually used in English of a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y
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Recent Examples of vowel from the Web
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Aurelio Monteagudo has all five vowels in his first name.
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When trained on recordings of 90 people making four vowel sounds, old-school computers performed the task with relative ease: A computer simulating a 16-neuron network was right 92% of the time.
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The researchers then tested their optical neural network on a real-world task: recognizing vowel sounds.
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The slim, stylish former real estate executive addressed the crowd in a soft but confident tenor, revealing the New York influences around his vowels.
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Training a traditional neural network on the same data set produced a vowel-recognition accuracy of just over 90 percent.
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To show that their network works, the authors had 90 people record one of four different vocal sounds and then used half of this set to train a neural network to recognize vowels.
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The Hawaiian language only has 12 letters (five vowels and eight consonants).
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Dorsey and his co-founders eventually added vowels to the service, forming Twitter.
These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'vowel.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Origin and Etymology of vowel
Middle English, from Anglo-French vowele, from Latin vocalis — more at vocalic
Other Grammar and Linguistics Terms
VOWEL Defined for English Language Learners
vowel
playDefinition of vowel for English Language Learners
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: a speech sound made with your mouth open and your tongue in the middle of your mouth not touching your teeth, lips, etc.
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: a letter (such as a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y in English) that represents a vowel
VOWEL Defined for Kids
vowel
playDefinition of vowel for Students
1 : a speech sound (as \ə\, \ā\, or \ȯ\) produced without obstruction in the mouth
2 : a letter (as a, e, i, o, u) representing a vowel
Learn More about vowel
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See words that rhyme with vowel Spanish Central: Translation of vowel Nglish: Translation of vowel for Spanish speakers Britannica English: Translation of vowel for Arabic speakers Britannica.com: Encyclopedia article about vowel
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