palatal

• POS: Adjective, Noun
• HYPHEN: pal=a=tal

CIDE DICTIONARY

palatal, a. [Cf. F. palatal.].

•  Of or pertaining to the palate; palatine; as, the palatal bones.  [1913 Webster]
•  Uttered by the aid of the palate; -- said of certain sounds, as the sound of k in kirk.  [1913 Webster]

palatal, n. 

 A sound uttered, or a letter pronounced, by the aid of the palate, as the letters k and y.  [1913 Webster]

OXFORD DICTIONARY

palatal, adj. & n.
--adj.
1 of the palate.
2 (of a sound) made by placing the surface of the tongue against the hard palate (e.g. y in yes).
--n. a palatal sound.

Derivative

palatalize v.tr. (also -ise). palatalization n. palatally adv.

Etymology

F (as PALATE)

THESAURUS

palatal

accented, allophone, alveolar, apical, apico-alveolar, apico-dental, articulated, articulation, aspiration, assimilated, assimilation, back, barytone, bilabial, broad, cacuminal, central, cerebral, check, checked, close, consonant, consonantal, continuant, dental, diphthong, dissimilated, dissimilation, dorsal, epenthetic vowel, explosive, flat, front, glide, glossal, glottal, glottalization, guttural, hard, heavy, high, intonated, labial, labialization, labiodental, labiovelar, laryngeal, lateral, lax, light, lingual, liquid, low, manner of articulation, mid, modification, monophthong, monophthongal, morphophoneme, mute, muted, narrow, nasal, nasalized, occlusive, open, oxytone, palatalized, parasitic vowel, peak, pharyngeal, pharyngealization, pharyngealized, phone, phoneme, phonemic, phonetic, phonic, pitch, pitched, plosive, posttonic, prothetic vowel, retroflex, rounded, segmental phoneme, semivowel, soft, sonant, sonority, speech sound, stop, stopped, stressed, strong, surd, syllabic, syllabic nucleus, syllabic peak, syllable, tense, thick, throaty, tonal, tonic, transition sound, triphthong, twangy, unaccented, unrounded, unstressed, velar, vocable, vocalic, vocoid, voice, voiced, voiced sound, voiceless, voiceless sound, voicing, vowel, vowellike, weak, wide