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fricative

noun · adjective

Simple meaning

Any of several speech sounds produced by air flowing through a constriction in the oral cavity and usually producing a sibilant, hissing, or buzzing quality.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

frikuhtiv

Say the bold part a little louder.

US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈfɹɪkətɪv

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. phonetics

    Any of several speech sounds produced by air flowing through a constriction in the oral cavity and typically producing a sibilant, hissing, or buzzing quality; a fricative consonant.

adjective

  1. phonetics

    Produced by air flowing through a restriction in the oral cavity.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
C2 · Proficient (estimated)

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: (phonetics) Any of several speech sounds produced by air flowing through a constriction in the oral cavity and typically producing a sibilant, hissing, or buzzing quality; a fricative consonant.

Used this way, fricative is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a grammar or language-study use: it describes how language works, so it appears in teaching and reference writing.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Formal
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
Matter-of-fact
Usage feel
Formal and precise

Where it naturally appears

  • Academic writing
  • Education/classroom
  • Technical/specialist writing

Usage note

Comfortable in writing and prepared speech; in casual conversation a shorter everyday word usually sounds more natural.

Nearby words

  • sibilant , a specialist term, precise but narrower

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

fricative consonantvelar fricativedental fricativevoiced fricativevoiceless fricativealveolar fricativefricative soundglottal fricative

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • fricative consonantnounCompound term

    A continuant consonant produced by breath moving against a narrowing of the vocal tract.

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

noun

Sense: any of several speech sounds produced by air flowing through a constriction in the oral cavity and typically producing a sibilant

sibilantTechnicalspirantDated

adjective

Sense: produced by air flowing through a restriction in the oral cavity

softTechnical

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.