elisionnoun [ C or U ]
uk/ɪˈlɪʒ.ən/us/ɪˈlɪʒ.ən/specializedthe fact of not pronouncing a particular sound in a word
Thesaurus: synonyms and related words
Linguistics: phonology & phonetics
- alveolar
- approximant
- articulatory
- aspiration
- assimilation
- bilabial
- clear l
- clipped
- consonant
- onomatopoeia
- palatal
- palato-alveolar
- pharyngeal
- phoneme
- phonemic
- pronounce
- silent letter
- voiced
- vowel
- weak form
See more results »
Examples from literature
- I found the half-forgotten Southern intonations and elisions as pleasing to my ear as they had formerly been.
- On the whole, he left you dubious until the moment when, from pure nervousness, his speech went wild, even suffering that slight elision of the aspirate observed by some of them.
- She scarcely sounded the t in Kentucky, since she also was of the South, where the languid air tends to produce elisions.
- The "extract" in question consists of two short paragraphs only, printed, without any indication of important elisions, in each of the paragraphs.
- This important shade of meaning may be given, I think, by the possessive u which originally belonged in the phrase, but suffered elision.