supradentaladj.n.
/ˌsuːprəˈdɛntl/, /ˌsjuːprəˈdɛntl/, U.S. /ˌsuprəˈdɛn(t)l/ A. adj.
1. Chiefly Zoology. Located above the teeth.
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1867 J. A. McBride Anat. Outl. Horse 12 Between these two surfaces exists a canal which is called the supra dental foramen.
1914 Trans. 36th Ann. Meeting Amer. Laryngol. Assoc. 112 The antrum..is separated from the upper lip in the supra dental fossa by a very thin plate of bone.
1976 Copeia No. 4. 652/1 The Marsland Quarry fossils are gerrhonotine-like in lacking a distinct oblique ridge dividing the dorsal surface of the supradental shelf into anterior and posterior portions.
2007 Jrnl. Herpetol. 41 215/1 The supradental shelf is mediolaterally wide but not tall.
2. Phonetics. Of a speech sound or articulation: made by pressing the tip of tongue on or just above the top of the teeth. Variously used synonymously with alveolar, cerebral, and (occasionally) palatal.
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1885 Encycl. Brit. XVIII. 787/2 The sound of the sibilant s cannot be fixed exactly; it may have been dental either like the French s, or more supra-dental as in English.
1926 B. Karlgren Philol. & Anc. China iv. 80 No pronouncement is here made about whether these sounds were hard, supradental (‘cerebrals’), tṣ-, tṣ'-, ṣ-, etc., somewhat resembling English heartshaped.
1955 Far Eastern Q. 14 409 The differentiation of..Ancient supradental affricates from the original Archaic dental affricates.
2000 V. Digalakis & L. Neumeyer in M. Rayner Spoken Lang. Translator iii. xviii. 277 The usual supradental /r/ sound becomes uvular.
B. n. Phonetics.
A supradental consonant.
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the mind > language > linguistics > study of speech sound > speech sound > consonant > [noun]
consonant1603
mutable1767
articulation1849
supradental1881
contoid1943
non-vocoid1943
1881 H. Sweet in J. Storm Englische Philologie 42 No supradentals in English. d, l, s are formed on the gums just behind the teeth; sh and r a little further back, but not more so than in German.
1969 Language 45 125 To say that the supradentals are merely occurrence phenomena of [r] plus dental leads to undesirable results.
1989 Jrnl. Southeast Asian Stud. 20 317 In Wolff's phoneme chart, *t and *d have the same place of articulation. But in most Austronesian languages, they do not (d and n usually being alveolars, and t being a supradental).
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, June 2012; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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adj.n.1867