Monophthongate

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To transform a gliding diphthong into one steady vowel sound during pronunciation or sound change over time
2. Converting a two-part vowel sound, in which the tongue glides, into a single unchanging vowel quality
3. Reducing a vowel that glides between two positions into one pure vowel, a process found in many language histories

Etymology: Monophthongate is a linguistics term for the process by which a diphthong, a vowel glide that moves from one sound to another within a single syllable, simplifies into a single steady vowel. The word is built from "mono-", Greek for "single" or "one," and "diphthong," itself from Greek "diphthongos," meaning "two sounds," with the verb-forming suffix "-ate" added. Its form follows the pattern of many technical coinages from classical roots made by scholars in the 19th and 20th centuries, rather than being an ancient Greek word used in its modern sense. The clearest example is in the history of English. Middle English "stone" was pronounced with a diphthong, roughly "stown," and over the centuries the glide dropped out, leaving the single vowel of modern "stone." The same kind of simplification happened to many long vowels in the Great Vowel Shift, so linguists often describe monophthongization as a standard tool for tracking how sounds change over time.

Synonyms: monophthongize