sonant

• POS: Adjective, Noun
• HYPHEN: so=nant

CIDE DICTIONARY

sonant, a. [L. sonans, -antis, p. pr. of sonare to sound. See Sound a noise.].

•  Of or pertaining to sound; sounding.  [1913 Webster]
•  Uttered, as an element of speech, with tone or proper vocal sound, as distinguished from mere breath sound; intonated; voiced; vocal; tonic; the opposite of nonvocal, or surd; -- said of the vowels, semivowels, liquids, and nasals, and particularly of the consonants b, d, g hard, v, etc., as compared with their cognates p, t, k, f, etc., which are called nonvocal, surd, or aspirate.  [1913 Webster]

OXFORD DICTIONARY

sonant, adj. & n. Phonet.
--adj. (of a sound) voiced and syllabic.
--n. a voiced sound, esp. other than a vowel and capable of forming a syllable, e.g. l, m, n, ng, r.

Derivative

sonancy n.

Etymology

L sonare sonant- sound

THESAURUS

sonant

accented, allophone, alveolar, apical, apico-alveolar, apico-dental, articulate, 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, oral, oxytone, palatal, palatalized, parasitic vowel, peak, pharyngeal, pharyngealization, pharyngealized, phone, phoneme, phonemic, phonetic, phonic, pitch, pitched, plosive, posttonic, prothetic vowel, retroflex, rounded, segmental phoneme, semivowel, soft, sonority, speech sound, spoken, stop, stopped, stressed, strong, surd, syllabic, syllabic nucleus, syllabic peak, syllable, tense, thick, throaty, tonal, tonic, transition sound, triphthong, twangy, unaccented, unrounded, unstressed, velar, viva, vocable, vocal, vocalic, vocoid, voice, voiced, voiced sound, voiceless, voiceless sound, voicing, vowel, vowellike, weak, wide