Consonant

Entertainment / Literature / Consonant: A speech sound that is not a vowel. To download a PDF file listing consonants and their symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet, click here.
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Lenition

Entertainment / Literature / Lenition: The softening of a consonant sound, i.e., the replacement of a hard and abrupt sound by a more hissing or continuous sound that makes the syllable containing it easier to pronounce in the midst of oth MORE

Mutation

Science / Biology / Mutation: Any heritable change in the nucleotide sequence of DNA; can involve substitutions, insertions, or deletions of one or more nucleotides. MORE

Euphony

Entertainment / Literature / Euphony: (from Greek 'good sound') Attempting to group words together harmoniously, so that the consonants permit an easy and pleasing flow of sound when spoken, as opposed to cacophony, when the poet intentio MORE

Syncope

Entertainment / Literature / Syncope: When a desperate poet drops a vowel sound between two consonants to make the meter match in each line. It can also be used as a rhetorical device any time a writer deletes a syllable or letter from th MORE

Semivowel

Entertainment / Literature / Semivowel: A sound articulated in the same way as a vowel sound, but which functions like a consonant typically. Examples include [w] and [y]. In some languages such as Welsh, these can function as graphemes for MORE

Masoretic

Entertainment / Literature / Masoretic: (from Hebrew Masorah, 'handed over') The Masoretic texts are partly Hebrew and partly Aramaic versions of the Hebrew Bible (i.e., what Christians call the Old Testament) with accompanying explanatory MORE