noun
- a speech sound that begins as one vowel and glides into another vowel within the same syllable
Usage: linguistics
Examples
- The word ‘coin’ contains the diphthong /ɔɪ/.
- In ‘house,’ the ‘ou’ represents a diphthong.
- Students learned to identify diphthongs in their pronunciation class.
- The diphthong in ‘time’ glides from /a/ to /ɪ/.
- English has several common diphthongs like those in ‘boy’ and ‘cow’.
- The teacher explained that a diphthong is different from two separate vowel sounds.