1. a speech sound made without blocking the flow of air from the lungs, typically forming the center of a syllable
Usage: linguistics
2. a letter of the alphabet representing a vowel sound, especially a, e, i, o, u

Examples

• The word ‘apple’ begins with a vowel sound.
• In English, the letters a, e, i, o, and u are vowels.
• Some words have no vowel letters but still contain vowel sounds.
• The vowel in ‘cat’ is pronounced differently than the vowel in ‘cake’.
• Y can function as either a vowel or consonant depending on its position.
• Long vowels are held for a longer duration than short vowels.
• The teacher asked students to circle all the vowels in the sentence.