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Aspirate   Listen
noun
Aspirate  n.  
1.
A sound consisting of, or characterized by, a breath like the sound of h; the breathing h or a character representing such a sound; an aspirated sound.
2.
A mark of aspiration used in Greek; the asper, or rough breathing.
3.
An elementary sound produced by the breath alone; a surd, or nonvocal consonant; as, f, th in thin, etc.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Aspirate" Quotes from Famous Books



... measure, it may be noted that if all the verses were like the second, they might properly be placed merely in short lines, producing a not uncommon form; but the presence in all the others of one line-mostly the second in the verse" (stanza?)—"which flows continuously, with only an aspirate pause in the middle, like that before the short line in the Sapphic Adonic, while the fifth has at the middle pause no similarity of sound with any part besides, gives the versification an entirely different effect. We could wish the capacities of our noble language in prosody ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... hospitality to vagrant impressions. The Junior Journalists may have been a little hard on him. On the whole, he left you dubious until the moment when, from pure nervousness, his speech went wild, even suffering that slight elision of the aspirate observed by some of them. But then, he had a voice of such singular musical felicity that it charmed you into forgetfulness of ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... is in town; somewhere near Sackville Street. Vulgarity had marked him for her own at an early age. She had set her mark indelibly on his speech, his manners, and his habits. When ten years old he had learned to aspirate his initial vowels; when twelve he had mastered the whole theory and practice of eating cheese with his knife; at seventeen his mind was saturated with ribald music ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay

... of "Hamlet" also enables us to decide with approximate certainty upon the period when these manuscript readings were entered upon the margins of the folio. Not more surely did the lacking aspirate betray the Ephraimite at Jordan than the spelling of this manuscript corrector reveals the period at which he performed his labors. Take, for instance, the word "vile." Any man who could make the body ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... edition, London, 1897. They are, first, the stroke of the glottis. (This is advocated by Garcia in most of his published works, although the testimony of many of his pupils, notably Mme. Marchesi, is that Garcia used the glottic stroke very little in actual instruction.) Second, the aspirate (h as in have), which is generally condemned. Third, the approximation of the vocal cords at the precise instant the breath blast strikes them. This latter mode of attack is advocated by Browne and Behnke, who call it the "slide ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor

... the Greek φ, which was a double sound rather than a single one, namely p h with each element distinctly audible, as in English top-heavy, uphill. Quintilian says: "The Greeks are accustomed to aspirate; whence Cicero in his oration for Fundanius ridicules a witness who could not sound the first letter of that name." [2] The descriptions given by Priscian and Terentianus Maurus of the position of the lips and teeth in pronouncing f show that it was formed ...
— Latin Pronunciation - A Short Exposition of the Roman Method • Harry Thurston Peck

... in the English language, in which h is written, but not pronounced, are words derived from Latin through the French; but of these, many in English retain the aspirate, though in French nearly all lose it. The exceptions collected by E. H. satisfactorily prove that we do not follow the French rule implicitly. They indeed carry the non-aspiration farther than to words of Latin derivation. They omit the aspirate to nearly all words derived from Greek. This ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 208, October 22, 1853 • Various

... cockney still as the costers ever were. They were of a plinth-like bigness up and down, and their kind, plain, common faces were all topped with narrow-brimmed sailor-hats, mostly black. In their jargoning hardly an aspirate was in its right place, but they looked as if their hearts were, and if no word came from their lips with its true quality, but with that curious soft London slur or twist, they doubtless spoke a ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells

... or Amma, several times mentioned, appears to be the Old Testament land of Ham, in northern Bashan, near Damascus (Gen. xiv. 5). The Hebrew is spelled with the soft aspirate, not the hard guttural. It may perhaps be connected with the name of the "Amu" ...
— Egyptian Literature

... may observe that the plain called by the Greeks Esdraelon, as a corruption of Jezreel, is that named "Megiddo" in Old Testament Scripture. In the New Testament it bears the prefix of the Hebrew word Har (mountain) minus the aspirate, being written in Greek, and so becomes "Armageddon" in the book ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn

... Amateurs, and all who wish to speak well and effectively in Public or Private. By CHARLES HARTLEY. Contents: Cultivation of the Speaking Voice, Management of the Voice, Pausing, Taking Breath, Pitch, Articulation, Pronunciation, The Aspirate, The Letter E, Emphasis, Tone, Movement, Feeling and Passion, Verse, Scriptural Reading, Stammering and ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton

... slight aspirate preceding and modifying the sibilant, which is, however, the stronger of the two consonants; e.g. hsing hissing ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner

... unfit for singing. Greater calumny has never been uttered. I contend for just the opposite: That English is the very best language for an artistic singer to use, for it contains the greatest variety of vocal and aspirate elements, which afford an artistic singer the strongest, most natural and expressive means of dramatic reality. The English language has all the pure vowels and vocal consonants of the Italian; and, besides, it is full of rich elements, mixed vowels, diphthongs and an army of vigorous ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller

... improbable that old jugs were sold at curiosity shops in these days, and given by amateurs to artists. The inscription proves that, in the eighth to seventh centuries, at a time of very archaic characters (the Alpha is lying down on its side, the aspirate is an oblong with closed ends and a stroke across the middle, and the Iota is curved at each end), people could write with ease, and would put verse into writing. The general accomplishment of ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang

... of the aspirate, Fuddy-Duddy, the incapable terrapin, came to a dead halt, and before the vowel had died away up the ravine had folded up all his eight legs and lain down in the dusty road, regardless of the effect upon his derned skin. The queer little ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce

... strikingly poor in vocables, or separate sounds for the conveyance of speech. The number of these vocables varies from between 800 and 900 in Cantonese to no more than 420 in the vernacular of Peking. This scanty number, however, is eked out by interposing an aspirate between certain initial consonants and the vowel, so that for instance p'u is distinguished from pu. The latter is pronounced with little or no emission of breath, the "p" approximating the farther north one goes (e.g. at Niuchwang) more closely to a "b." The aspirated p'u ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various



Words linked to "Aspirate" :   draw in, take, pronounce, enunciate, aspiration, consonant, breathe in, suck in, inspire, inhale, suck out, articulate, sound out, withdraw, draw out, take away, say, enounce, aspirator



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