Sonants

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Voiced speech sounds, such as vowels, liquids and nasals, produced with vibration of the vocal cords and able to form the core of a syllable
2. Speech sounds made with the vocal cords vibrating, including vowels and resonant consonants like liquids and nasals
3. Voiced phonetic units that carry the main resonance of a syllable, typically vowels or consonants such as l, r, m and n

Etymology: "Sonants" is the plural of "sonant", a term used in phonetics for a speech sound that is voiced and can function as the core of a syllable, like the "l" or "m" in "bottle" or "rhythm". The singular comes from Latin "sonans", the present participle of "sonare", meaning "to sound" or "to make a noise," and the Latin verb itself is built from "sonus", "sound". The Latin source word is the ancestor of the English "sound" family, including "sonic" and "sonata", so "sonant" is a close relative of those more familiar words. The English term is a loanword taken directly from Latin, so it kept the Latin form and meaning rather than passing through French. Its ending, "-ant", is the same Latin participial suffix found in many English words, and the surface analysis of "son-" plus "-ant" matches the Latin construction exactly.