Log in or Sign up
  1. ablaut love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. A vowel change, characteristic of Indo-European languages, that accompanies a change in grammatical function; for example, i, a, u in sing, sang, sung. Also called gradation.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. In philology, a substitution of one vowel for another in the body of the root of a word, accompanying a modification of use or meaning: as, bind, band, bound, bond, German bund; more especially, the change of a vowel to indicate tense-change in strong verbs, instead of the addition of a syllable (-ed), as in weak verbs: as, get, gat, got; sink, sank, sunk.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. (Philol.) The substitution of one root vowel for another, thus indicating a corresponding modification of use or meaning; vowel permutation; as, get, gat, got; sing, song; hang, hung.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. a vowel whose quality or length is changed to indicate linguistic distinctions (such as sing sang sung song)

Etymologies

  1. From German Ablaut ("off-sound"), from ab ("off"), + Laut ("sound"). (Wiktionary)
  2. German : ab, off (from Middle High German ab, abe, from Old High German aba; see apo- in Indo-European roots) + Laut, sound (from Middle High German lūt, from Old High German hlūt; see kleu- in Indo-European roots). (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

  • “They exhibit perfectly the features of quantitative ablaut, which is the older form.”

    Diachrony of PIE

  • “I doubt ablaut was still a productive system at the time that one could speak of 'Greek'.”

    Missing honey

  • “Hittite and Greek do show words with ablaut. βλιττω is difficult to explain any differently.”

    Missing honey

  • “No ablaut in a Greek noun can not be used as evidence that it isn't Indo-European.”

    Missing honey

  • “I'm sure this wasn't the implication of what you were trying to say, as you must be aware that root-ablaut in Greek is non-existent in Greek.”

    Missing honey

  • “Hittite and Greek do show words with ablaut. βλιττω is difficult to explain any differently.”

    Missing honey

  • “And ablaut in the root of consonant stems is unheard of in any form of Greek.”

    Missing honey

  • “Some words of this root in some languages have zero grade so it must be from the Genitive with ablaut.”

    Missing honey

  • “While the word is still clearly of foreign origin it is no surprised that we have no ablaut in the root.”

    Missing honey

  • “No ablaut in a Greek noun can not be used as evidence that it isn't Indo-European.”

    Missing honey

Show 10 more examples...

Log in or sign up to add your own related words.

synonyms (8)

Words with the same meaning

  1. voj
  1. apophony
  1. gradation
  1. prij
  1. l
  1. sh
  1. alternation
  1. prijevoj

hypernyms (2)

Words that are more generic or abstract

  1. vowel
  1. vowel sound

hyponyms (2)

Words that are more specific

  1. gradation
  1. grade

reverse dictionary (4)

Words that contain this word in their definition

  1. apophony
  1. gradation
  1. grade
  1. series

tags (4)

Free-form, user-generated categorization

  1. language
  1. linguistics
  1. morphology
  1. vccvvc

Log in or sign up to add your own tag.

tagging (2)

Words tagged ‘ablaut’

  1. ablait, ablaat, ablaut
  1. apophony

Wordmap

(beta)

Word visualization

Lists

These user-created lists contain the word ‘ablaut’.

More lists containing ‘ablaut’

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • reesetee Oooh! Nice word too! Thanks, colleen. Aug 27, 2007

  • colleen fantastic word, and it reminded me to add bliaut, which is not at all similiar. Aug 25, 2007

  • reesetee A vowel change, characteristic of Indo-European languages, that accompanies a change in grammatical function: for example, the i, a, and u in sing, sang, sung. Aug 24, 2007

Tweets

Looking for tweets for ablaut.

‘ablaut’ has been looked up 4109 times, loved by 5 people, added to 18 lists, commented on 3 times, and has a Scrabble score of 8.