Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Pronounced or articulated with both lips, as the consonants b, p, m, and w.
- adjective Relating to both lips.
- noun A bilabial sound or consonant.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Involving the two lips.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective (Linguistics) produced using both lips; -- said of a consonant. .
- noun (Linguistics) a consonant that is articulated using both lips, as p or b or w.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective phonetics Articulated with both
lips . - noun phonetics A speech sound articulated with both lips.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a consonant that is articulated using both lips; /p/ or /b/ or /w/
- adjective of or relating to or being a speech sound that is articulated using both lips
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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Yes, it's formed by closing both lips -- 'bilabial' -- rather than using tongue and teeth.
Bukiet on Brooklyn Books Hal Duncan 2009
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Point is, if the model is accurate it's like describing how sounds are articulated phonetically, how the/b/sound is a voiced bilabial plosive.
Bukiet on Brooklyn Books Hal Duncan 2009
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Perhaps the voiced bilabial plosive suggests the last and energetic verb (I know the withheld verbs create suspense).
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Yes, it makes Sean Kingston's Beautiful Girls look like Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands, but Mohombi isn't about furrowing brows, he's about fun with a capital bilabial fricative.
Mohombi (No 845) 2010
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As I've remarked before on my blog, Etruscan p consistently shows lenition to a bilabial fricative /ɸ/ whenever it neighbours the high rounded back vowel u.
The etymology of Latin tofus 'tufa' isn't written in stone 2009
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If we only assess the problem from within the specialized bubble of the narrow Etruscan field, internal -u- before bilabial m can easily be explained away as a reduced form of original *-e-.
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In Arabic, there is no "p" sound (voiceless bilabial plosive), so it is often replaced with a "b" sound (voiced bilabial plosive).
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Consider the Etruscan use of letter phi, coding for the aspirate bilabial stop, which tends to mark many Greek loans: Φerse 'Perseus' and Φuipa 'Phoibe'.
The etymology of Latin tofus 'tufa' isn't written in stone 2009
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In Arabic, there is no "p" sound (voiceless bilabial plosive), so it is often replaced with a "b" sound (voiced bilabial plosive).
House Votes Overwhelmingly To Condemn MoveOn; Large Majority Of Dems Votes "Aye" 2009
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Now, this is a matter of detail perhaps but worth noting since p has occasionally eroded to f in Etruscan, particularly next to tautosyllabic u, and this sort of lenition can only rationally happen with a bilabial phoneme, not a labiodental one.
Archive 2009-05-01 2009
gruentrader commented on the word bilabial
(ragdacious)
November 27, 2008