Sibilant
[zibiˈlant]
The verdict
“Sibilant” is uncommon German (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency German
- 8
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Linguistik, speziell Phonetik: Untergruppe der Reibelaute/Frikative, die am Zahndamm oder am vorderen weichen Gaumen/Palatum gebildet werden
Corpus desk
Index DE-sibilant · Sibilant · German
Sibilant · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 8 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "S" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | Sibilant |
| Language | German |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | [zibiˈlant] |
| Letters | 8 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Langschwanz-Rang von „Sibilant“ im Deutschen
Rare enough to double-check
Sibilant is uncommon German outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun, transcribed [zibiˈlant]. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Linguistik, speziell Phonetik: Untergruppe der Reibelaute/Frikative, die am Zahndamm oder am vorderen weichen Gaumen/Palatum gebildet werden".
Sibilant doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct German form is Sibilant, spelled S-I-B-I-L-A-N-T.
Definition
- 1Linguistik, speziell Phonetik: Untergruppe der Reibelaute/Frikative, die am Zahndamm oder am vorderen weichen Gaumen/Palatum gebildet werden
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how Sibilant appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
[s] wie in dem Wort "Last", [z] wie in dem Wort "Rose" und [ʃ] wie in dem Wort "Busch" sind die Sibilanten des Deutschen. In Fremdwörtern kommen weitere vor, vor allem [ʒ] wie in "Journalist".
„Die deutschen Sibilanten werden in der dentalen und palato-alveolaren Zone gebildet. Die palato-alveolaren Sibilanten [ʃ] und [ʒ] werden auch ‚Schibilanten‘ (nach Herbert Penzl) genannt.“
Synonyms
Antonyms
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.