Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Obstructing or closing natural openings or passages of the body.
- n. An obstruent medicine or agent.
- n. Linguistics A sound, such as a stop, fricative, or affricate, that is produced with complete blockage or at least partial constriction of the airflow through the nose or mouth.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Obstructive; impeding.
- n. Anything that obstructs; especially, anything that blocks up the natural passages of the body.
Wiktionary
- n. phonetics a consonant sound formed by obstructing the airway, causing turbulence; the generic term of plosive, fricative and affricate
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Causing obstruction; blocking up; hindering.
- n. Anything that obstructs or closes a passage; esp., that which obstructs natural passages in the body.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a consonant that is produced with a partial or complete blockage of the airflow from the lungs through the nose or mouth
Etymologies
- Latin obstruēns, obstruent-, present participle of obstruere, to obstruct; see obstruct. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“If I'm correct about terminal obstruent devoicing continuing in the region, then they never did speak Old High German as we usually think of it note that terminal obstruent devoicing is one of the criteria for distinguishing MHG from OHG.”
The PIE and Pre-PIE pronominal system from the perspective of a wave model
“This led to terminal obstruent devoicing spreading to the rest of the continuum, and I suspect that þd may also have originated with the Franconian node though this is little more than speculation.”
The PIE and Pre-PIE pronominal system from the perspective of a wave model
“For instance, in the prehistory of Modern Persian, apocope introduced word-final clusters of obstruent or nasal + r.”
“My transcription is the standard followed by both Szczurowski 1954 and Patkanyi 1963, in which g is understood as a voiced obstruent of unknown/indeterminate value and many perhaps most scholars interpretet it as dental [d] or even interdental fricative [D]!”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘obstruent’.
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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bilby's Words
pandemic, whirl, guffaw, ethereal, feisty, dunt, ephemeral, pule, flipergebet, prink, maunder, gammon and 1023 more...
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Adjectival Arcana
A roster of adjectives that infrequently surface in typical conversation and writing. Many are dredged from scientific or other technical jargon or sieved from examples of disused archaic forms.
unitegmic, acaulescent, reticuloendothelial, ingressive, uniate, acanthopterygian, ossific, epiphysial, perivisceral, acœlomatous, cestoid, acælomate and 7756 more...
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TheRubyCrab's list
I like to read my dictionary like a book. Here are some of my favorite words I've come across in my travels...
reverie, kismet, quizzical, phantasmagorical, incandescence, doppelganger, elysium, serendipity, pareidolia, apophenia, celestial, somnambulant and 17 more...
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sound clever (innit)
epistemology, grammatology, mimesis, grammarian, obstruent, glottodidactics, taxonomy, solipsism, magnum opus, exegesis
Tweets
Looking for tweets for obstruent.
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