noun
- plural of medial; sounds or letters occurring in the middle of a word
Usage: linguistics; phonetics
Examples
- The linguist analyzed the medials in various English words.
- Students struggled to identify the medials in multisyllabic words.
- The phonetics course covered initials, medials, and finals.
- Medials often undergo different sound changes than word-initial consonants.
- The researcher compared medials across different language families.