From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishvowelvow‧el /ˈvaʊəl/ ●●○ noun [countable] 1 SLCone of the human speech sounds that you make by letting your breath flow out without closing any part of your mouth or throat2 SLAa letter of the alphabet used to represent a vowel. In English the vowels are a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y.
Examples from the Corpus
vowel• And all his fans can rest assured that even a vowel change won't fool us.• Some phonologists maintain that a syllabic consonant is really a case of a vowel and a consonant that have become combined.• These often involve vowel sounds having their Creole rather than their expected London pronunciations.• Much of the easy flow of speech depends on the neutral vowel.• In some accents - particularly London ones - we often find a close back rounded vowel instead.• Weak syllables with close back rounded vowels are not so commonly found.• Diphthongs are made from a simple vowel phoneme followed by one of, , .Origin vowel (1300-1400) Old French vouel, from Latin vocalis; → VOCAL1 