Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A mid-central neutral vowel, typically occurring in unstressed syllables, as the final vowel of English sofa.
- n. The symbol (ə) used to represent an unstressed neutral vowel and, in some systems of phonetic transcription, a stressed mid-central vowel, as in but.
Wiktionary
- n. An indeterminate central vowel sound as the "a" in "about", represented as /ə/ in IPA and /@/ in SAMPA and X-SAMPA.
- n. The character ə, an upside-down, backwards, lower-case E
WordNet 3.0
- n. a neutral middle vowel; occurs in unstressed syllables
Etymologies
- German Schwa, from Hebrew שְׁוָא (š’vā), meaning "nought". (Wiktionary)
- German, from Hebrew šəwā', probably from Syriac (nuqzē) šwayyā, even (points), pl. passive participle of šwā, to be even; see šwy in Semitic roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“There's nae fuckin schwa in the Roman alfabet so ye cannae ever really be akyirit, ye ken?”
“A correspondent from Brazil writes to ask about the origins of the phonetics term schwa, used to identify, for example, the English mid-central vowel sound of unstressed the or the final vowel in sofa, and written with an inverted e.”
“This neutral vowel phoneme known as schwa is produced by the vibration of the vocal cords alone, with the tongue in a neutral position and requiring a minimal amount of articulatory effort.”
“You referred to the vowel in the first syllable of the “PEH-duh-file” pronunciation as being a schwa, but the schwa is a sound that occurs only in unaccented syllables, like the first syllable of “about.””
Simon & Schuster: The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time
“In the science of language that calls itself linguistics, a schwa is a neutral vowel sound, its symbol an inverted e, pronounced uh and usually unstressed, as the a in ago or the i in easily.”
“The ə is called schwa, but the other Hausa letters don't have a name in the standard X keysym table.”
“Only thin I'm curious about, is how do you plan to explain the difference between the appearance of a 'schwa' and a 'supershortschwa'.”
Precising on a new rule to explain Pre-IE word-final voicing
“Also, its unstressed and reduced form, named "schwa", is likely to become a persistent problem if we consider that Portuguese unstressed vowels are not normally reduced.”
“Two phonemes: a voiced dental fricative and a schwa.”
“I would expect [məsəz] from a New Zealander, with the KIT-schwa merger.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘schwa’.
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Very Silly Words
A list of very silly sounding words, as well as words that are fun to say
badot, gardyloo, dingbat, gaffer, kine, haberdashery, forsooth, whey-faced, hoddypeak, brouhaha, widdershins, decemnovenarianize and 115 more...
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250 Cherry-Picked Words
Juicy words for the intermediate and advanced speller
consomme, miniaceous, nankeen, smaragdine, stramineous, vitellary, allemande, beguine, bransle, charabanc, margaritaceous, chaconne and 238 more...
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Silly-sounding words
Serious words that sound silly when you say them
philosophunculist, argy-bargy, Labradoodle, shittah, shittim, floccinaucinihili..., succedaneum, honorificabilitud..., fag-ma-fuff, buffarilla, yazzihamper, mammothrept and 140 more...
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Four Initial Consonants
Words that begin with a string of four consonants. The letter wye doesn't count, unless it clearly isn't acting as a vowel.
chthonic, nschiego, tschego, schmooze, schmaltz, schnapps, schlocky, schlieric, schlieren, schlump, schmutz, schmuck and 16 more...
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Linguistic Terms
Words that (mostly) only linguists know.
arpabet, protologism, diacritic, macron, macaronic, capitonym, grapheme, boustrophedon, allograph, analphabetic, idiomatic, portmanteau and 40 more...
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Fun to Say
Oh-so-pronounceable words.
schwa, sprack, rubbly, swashbuckler, hecka, tartine, ambiguous, ghee, trapped in, abecedarius, highfalutin, dirigible and 24 more...
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Miscellaneous
‽, ☤, mandelbrot, angora rabbit, psychrolutes marc..., vampyroteuthis in..., basking shark, mano de desierto, underwater sculpt..., surgical dining, gyroscope, Derinkuyu and 161 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, S
scrunch, solace, sabotage, saccade, sacerdotal, sacrilegious, sacristy, snappy, skew, steadfast, scowl, scorch and 781 more...
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whatever1013's Words
chocolate, sesquipedalophobia, discombobulated, callipygian, retronym, squirm, cobalt blue, plethora, onomatopoeia, blowhard, strumpet, shush and 173 more...
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Words I'd Like to Use Someday
thundersnow, phantasmagoria, mercurial, chimerical, taciturn, paraclete, lapis lazuli, flay, guttersnipe, wonky, misanthrope, kestrel and 583 more...
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curligirli0's Words
crapulous, swish, shiatsu, zen, xenoglossy, nincompoop, loquacious, pianissimo, onomatopoeia, imperturbable, silky, hosanas and 379 more...
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Wenderful's Whirled World of Blurred ...
Lexicon I likez... in no order whatsoever.
omnivalence, cerebration, sprachgefühl, schadenfreude, rutabaga, septuagenarian, foible, vainglorious, leviathan, remunerative, catastrophize, ancillary and 182 more...
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NTDW1
template, modal, sublingual, tandem, polycentric, septuagenarian, token, irrevocable, denotive, augural, aberrant, phlebotomy and 1188 more...
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the_grene_kni3t's Words
acuarela, sesquipedalian, capital, métier, chap, cove, guv, guv'nor, ratiocination, transatlantique, ineffable, aural and 142 more...
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C. S. Bird – Grandiloquent Dictionary
All the words from the Grandiloquent Dictionary.
946 of these 2700 words do not yield any results in six different dictionaries, hence many of them might be misspellings.
More in...abacinate, abcedarian, abderian, ablegate, abligurition, ablutophobia, abnormous, acarophobia, acathasia, accipitrine, accidia, accubitus and 2690 more...
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Favorite Five-Letter Words
Just what it sounds like. My favorites. Five letters.
ennui, barfy, samba, schwa, beefy, chunk, queef, spasm, skulk, bowel, elbow, fruit and 235 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for schwa.

seanahan I think we should change the pronunciation of these word to actually use the sound in question. Schwə. Sep 28, 2009
Telofy Schwa is the stomach punch sound. Heard here.
(And she uses willow as an example word. :-)) Sep 27, 2009
thesaraheffect It's hard for me to love a phoneme that is by definition "neutral" and "toneless." Inescapable and necessary? Certainly, but so are plagues and forest fires!
*sigh* I am certainly not a conoissieur of phonology and perhaps not yet developed a taste for the subtleties of the schwa. At present, however, I've simply resigned myself to its inevitability. Sep 26, 2009
frogapplause
Sep 24, 2009
chained_bear I love me some schwas! I think it's less UHHHHHHHH than it is AHHHHHHH anyway. Maybe an unholy combination.
Bilby, "venduhhhhh" sounds like you were talking to someone in Boston. Wicked pissah! Sep 24, 2009
Telofy Yes, schwa is teh alsome. I also like its rhotic brother ɚ as is apparent from r-coloring.
And /ə/ (as a phoneme) has so many pleasant allophones in English. Sometimes I hear the unstressed “a�? in such words as askance, about or aura pronounced with a somewhat a-ish inclination ([�?] I'd say). In Blackadder I even once heard the schwa in “Blackadder�? pronounced that way—prior to that I thought that was just a German accent thing. The same is true for other unstressed vowels that are reduced to a schwa. See Wikipedia: Vowel reduction in English or of course the main article about vowel reduction.
Oh, and I almost forgot to mention the schwa t-shirts.
(A schwa might not be the most brilliant tune as phones go, but never judge a sound by its sound alone!) Sep 24, 2009
madmouth oh, but it does so much more!
in French it's used for putting the extra bit of cabaret passion on a chanson (e.g. Piaf's il me l'a dit, l'a jure POUR LA VIIIIUUUUHHH), which is pretty awesome. and let's not forget Yogi Bear's schwa-epenthesis! in Hindi, you can shove a schwa into lots of consonant clusters, making learners grateful they don't have to pronounce 'ndh' and the like. how could anyone hate such a useful vowel?
Sep 24, 2009
john This page is very hurtful to me. My mom's name is Schwa. Sep 24, 2009
bilby I heard a person say vendor yesterday with a schwa as the final vowel. It was most unseemly. Sep 24, 2009
hernesheir I liken the schwa vowel to the least unmarked sound in English, the least common denominator, the color gray, the basal default unstressed phoneme, etc. Yet, I suspect one could not do without it, even for some simple workaday words.... perhaps someone should create a list of words from simple to complex for which the schwa phoneme is integral to the meaning of the word. Linguists, help us out here! List some minimal pairs.... Sep 24, 2009
thesaraheffect The most horrid vowel sound (and which occurs far to frequently in American English). Essentially, it is the sound of stupid: "uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" Sep 24, 2009
pterodactyl I'm gaga for schwas, but sometimes even I can't take any more. For those times, there is a place for me. Apr 14, 2009
johnmperry In the IPA it's the symbol �? Jul 20, 2008
chained_bear Ah, who cares? I love this word. And verbing funs language. :) Oct 22, 2007
the_grene_kni3t I like to use this as a verb meaning, "to pronounce as or with a schwa". The use does not appear to be legitimate . . . yet. Dec 29, 2006