phonation
noun
phonation is a noun meaning “The process of producing vocal sound by the vibration of the vocal folds that is in turn modified by the resonance of the vocal tract” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled P-H-O-N-A-T-I-O-N, and it appears about once in every 16 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of phonation is phonations.
What does phonation mean?
noun
- 1
The process of producing vocal sound by the vibration of the vocal folds that is in turn modified by the resonance of the vocal tract.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of phonation
- phonations plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is phonation?
Phonation appears about once in every 16 million words in written English, the 119,826th 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).
Phonation in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense process of producing vocal sound:
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 phonation come from?
From Ancient Greek φωνή (phōnḗ, “voice, sound”), equivalent to phonate + -ion.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).