syllable
/ˈsɪləb(ə)l
/noun
1A unit of pronunciation having one vowel sound, with or without surrounding consonants, forming the whole or a part of a word; for example, there are two syllables in water and three in inferno.The vowels of the stressed syllables in such words as father and fodder are generally identical....
- Students in the low-level group were not reading words but were learning letter names and sounds, and how to blend consonant and vowel sounds to make syllables.
- After blending consonants and vowels, syllables are blended into words and words are used in meaningful sentences.
1.1A character or characters representing a syllable.As its signs represent native syllables (such as sa and ke), TRANSLITERATION almost invariably produces phonetic change....
- The Su Tongpo poetry of the Kusoshi is printed in clear, blockish characters, while the waka verses appear in a mixture of cursive characters and kana syllables.
- Buddhist temple coins here in Japan are inscribed with kana syllables, not kanji ideograms.
1.2 [usually with negative] The least amount of speech or writing; the least mention of something: I’d never have breathed a syllable if he’d kept quiet...
- Perhaps it's just that the jurors are taking their mission very seriously and are reviewing every syllable of every bit of the testimony several times over.
- A skilled Dakota farmer (like a Murphy poem) therefore wastes no syllable, no bit of dirt.
- And afterwards Gordon Brown came out and gave a little speech - in which he said not one syllable about the campaign.
verb [with object]
Pronounce (a word or phrase) clearly, syllable by syllable.
Phrases
in words of one syllable
Derivatives
syllabled
[usually in combination]: many-syllabled words...
- He couldn't say any more then a one syllabled word at the moment.
- And yet the entire purpose of the exercise would remain lost in the half-baked intellectual stringing together of ten syllabled words.
- Scientists who jabbered on needlessly using five syllabled words had always gotten on his nerves.
Origin
Late Middle English: from an Anglo-Norman French alteration of Old French sillabe, via Latin from Greek sullabē, from sun- 'together' + lambanein 'take'.
Syllable comes via Old French and Latin from Greek sullabē, from sun- ‘together’ and lambanein ‘take’. A syllable is basically a group of sounds ‘taken together’ and uttered with a single effort.