sandhi
/ˈsʌndi/noun
sandhi is a noun meaning “Any of a wide variety of phonological processes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries, such as the fusion of sounds across word boundaries and…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled S-A-N-D-H-I, and it appears about once in every 26 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of sandhi is sandhis.
What does sandhi mean?
noun
- 1
Any of a wide variety of phonological processes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries, such as the fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of sounds due to neighboring sounds or due to the grammatical function of adjacent words.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce sandhi?
- UK /ˈsændi/
- UK /ˈsʌndi/
- US /ˈsʌndi/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-sandhi.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of sandhi
- sandhis plural
- saṃdhi
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is sandhi?
Sandhi appears about once in every 26 million words in written English, the 154,067th 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).
Sandhi in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense phonological process:
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 sandhi come from?
Learned borrowing from Sanskrit सं॒धि (saṃdhí, literally “junction; union”). Partial piecewise doublet of synthesis and synth.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).