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Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. A single vowel articulated without change in quality throughout the course of a syllable, as the vowel of English bed.
  2. n. Two written vowels representing a single sound, as oa in boat.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. A simple vowel-sound.
  2. n. A combination of two written vowels pronounced as one.

Wiktionary

  1. n. A vowel (in the sense of a sound rather than a letter of the alphabet) that has the same sound throughout its pronunciation, such as the short vowels in "pap", "pep", "pip", "pop" and "pup", as opposed to a diphthong (eg, /aɪ/, the vowel in "pipe") or a triphthong (eg, /aɪə/, the sound in the non-rhotic pronunciation of "pyre").

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. A single uncompounded vowel sound.
  2. n. A combination of two written vowels pronounced as one; a digraph.

Etymologies

  1. Late Greek monophthongos : Greek mono-, mono- + Greek phthongos, sound.

Examples

  • “A monophthong, on the other hand, is a vowel sound that has the same sound throughout, like the/æ/sound in American English hat.”

    Poetry in Pittsburghese « Motivated Grammar

  • “Putting the emphasis on the final syllable of Sotomayor is unnatural in English (which is why the president stopped doing it after the first time at his press conference), unlike my correspondent's simple preference for a monophthong over a diphthong, and insisting on an unnatural pronunciation is something we shouldn't be giving in to.”

    Terrance Heath: Sotomayor and the Vulcan Standard, Pt. 2

  • “She's getting the Oklahoma monophthong -- mah, she says, for my, and raht, for right.”

    So

  • “Monophthongization is the process of converting a diphthong to a monophthong (I’ll explain those terms in a minute.)”

    Poetry in Pittsburghese « Motivated Grammar

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  • Sorcha I can't help but feel that this word needs a bit of itself. Apr 13, 2011

‘monophthong’ has been looked up 3127 times, added to 16 lists, commented on 1 time, and has a Scrabble score of 22.