Rhotacizes

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To convert a sound into an 'r' pronunciation, typically in speech
2. to articulate with a rhotic quality in linguistics
3. to adapt a phonetic element so it expresses the 'r' sound characteristic in certain dialects

Etymology: "Rhotacizes" is the third-person singular form of "rhotacize," a verb meaning to pronounce a sound as the letter r, or to change another consonant into r. The root is "rho," the name of the seventeenth letter of the Greek alphabet, which was written as Ρ and gave Latin its R. The Greek name itself was used to label the sound, so the verb is built from the name of the letter rather than from the sound directly. The suffix "-ize" comes from Greek "-izein," a verb-forming ending that English adopted widely through Latin and French, and it was attached to "rho" to make a technical term for the process. Because the word is a modern coinage built from classical parts, it belongs to the vocabulary of phonetics and linguistics rather than to ordinary speech.