geminate

1. 1.

   a doubled or long consonant

   “the `n' in `thinness' is a geminate”

   Broaderconsonant

Other forms of geminate

plural

geminates·

past tense

geminated·

present participle

geminating·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about geminate

What does geminate mean?

geminate means "form by reduplication". That is the primary sense; the word has 5 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in geminate?

geminate has 3 syllables: gem-i-nate. The stress falls on "gem". In IPA it is /ˈdʒɛmənət/.

What is another word for geminate?

Close synonyms include reduplicate, pair, pair. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is geminate a common word?

geminate is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.