Affric

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A consonant sound that begins with a complete closure of the vocal tract and releases into a fricative, such as the initial sound in 'church'
2. A speech sound produced by blocking airflow completely and then releasing it through a narrow opening to create friction, like the 'ch' in 'chat'
3. A type of consonant articulated by first stopping the air completely and then letting it escape through a tight constriction, producing friction noise

Etymology: Before it became a poetic name for the continent, "affric" was simply an older English spelling of "Africa," and the name it spelled was itself borrowed. English took "Africa" from Latin, where the name was applied to the region around Carthage in what is now Tunisia, before it covered the whole continent. The Latin form is traced to "Afer," the name of a people of that region, though the origin of that name is uncertain. The shorter spelling survives mainly in older poetry, where writers often wanted a form that fit the metre or sounded more formal than the everyday name. Its use is literary and archaic rather than part of ordinary speech, so you will mostly meet it in older verse and in fixed phrases that poets reached for when they wanted a more elevated tone.