Delabialising

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The phonetic process of eliminating lip rounding from sounds when speaking
2. A change in pronunciation where rounded vowels or consonants lose their lip roundness
3. The linguistic alteration that involves dropping the use of lip rounding in articulating certain sounds

Etymology: Delabialising is a technical phonetics term, and its history is plain: it is formed from the verb "delabialise", itself built from the prefix "de-" meaning "reverse or remove" and "labial", from Latin "labialis", "of the lips", which derives from Latin "labium", "lip". Together the parts mean "to remove lip-ness", so the term describes unrounding a vowel or consonant, as when the vowel in "see" is pronounced with spread lips rather than the rounded lips of "oo". The pattern is productive in phonetics, where scholars routinely pair "labialise", meaning to add lip rounding, with its opposite. The word is a modern coinage from classical elements, built in the same way as many other scientific terms of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, rather than a word the Romans used.

Synonyms: delabializing, unlabialising

Antonyms: labialising, labializing