formant
/ˈfɔː(ɹ)mənt/noun
formant is a noun meaning “A band of frequencies in a sound spectrum that have greater intensity and determine the quality of a sound, especially the resonant frequencies of…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-O-R-M-A-N-T and has 2 syllables, and it appears about once in every 18 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of formant is formants.
What does formant mean?
noun
- 1
A band of frequencies in a sound spectrum that have greater intensity and determine the quality of a sound, especially the resonant frequencies of the vocal tract that determine the quality of vowels and sonorant consonants.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce formant?
- /ˈfɔː(ɹ)mənt/
Formant has 2 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Flame,_not_lame-formant.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of formant
- formants plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is formant?
Formant appears about once in every 18 million words in written English, the 127,184th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Formant in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense band of frequencies:
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does formant come from?
Borrowed from German Formant, from Latin fōrmāns (“shaping; forming; fashioning”), present participle of fōrmō (“to shape; to form; to fashion”). Doublet of formans.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).