sibilant

Other forms of sibilant

plural

sibilants·

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 sibilant

What does sibilant mean?

sibilant means "a consonant characterized by a hissing sound (like s or sh)". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in sibilant?

sibilant has 3 syllables: si-bi-lant. The stress falls on "si".

What is another word for sibilant?

Close synonyms include sibilant consonant, fricative, continuant, spirant, strident. 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 sibilant a common word?

sibilant 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.