''glottal'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260817185222-00-⌔

glottal - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Adjective

glottal (not comparable)

• Of or relating to the glottis.
• (phonetics) Articulated with the glottis.
  • ✤ Her Malay was the Malay of the Staate of Lanchap […] and she spoke it fierily, with crisp glottal checks, with much bubbling reduplication.¹
  • ✤ Both EE and SSBE feature glottal stops – unvoiced Ts – but in EE it can happen in the middle of words – eg “wa’er for “water” – whereas in SSBE it happens only at the end of words.²

Noun

glottal (plural glottals)

• (linguistics) A sound made with the glottis

Etymology

From glottis + -al.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈɡlɒt.əl/
  • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
• (General American, Atlantic Canada) IPA: /ˈɡlɑ.təl/, [ˈɡlɑ.ɾl̩]
• (Canada, Boston, Maine) IPA: /ˈɡlɒt.əl/, [ˈɡlɒɾ.l̩]
• (Australia) IPA: /ˈɡlɔt.əl/, [ˈɡlɔɾ.l̩]
• Rhymes: -ɒtəl
• Hyphenation: glot‧tal

Printed 2026-08-17.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

1. 1958, Anthony Burgess, The Enemy in the Blanket (The Malayan Trilogy), published 1972, page 256: ↩

2. 2023 October 31, “Language barrier: why even Harry has stopped speaking the king’s English”, in The Guardian ‎${}^{[1]}$, →ISSN, archived from the original on 13 March 2024: ↩