Schwa

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ʃwɑ/

Definitions

1. A central vowel sound that appears in unstressed positions within words
2. A phonetic representation of a neutral vowel sound commonly occurring in languages and marked by the symbol in linguistic contexts
3. A mid-central vowel sound frequently found in unstressed syllables of words, often represented by the phonetic symbol 'ə'

Etymology: The vowel is named after a Hebrew punctuation mark. In Classical Syriac, "š'wayyā" meant "even, equal," and it referred to a sign of two vertical dots used to separate parts of a sentence. Hebrew scholars later borrowed the term as "šəwā" for a different mark: a pair of dots placed under a consonant to show that it carried little or no vowel. The sign marked a vowel's absence, not a sound of its own. German grammarians adopted the Hebrew term as "Schwa," and English took it from German. The name stuck to the sound that the Hebrew dots came to signal: the faint, neutral vowel heard in unstressed syllables, as in the first sound of "about" or the final sound of "sofa." The symbol ə, which looks like an upside-down e, was adopted later for it. The word is a doublet of "shva," a related form that came into English through the same Hebrew source.