formant

American  

[fawr-muhnt] / ˈfɔr mənt /

noun

1. Music. the range and number of partials present in a tone of a specific instrument, representing its timbre.

2. Acoustic Phonetics. one of the regions of concentration of energy, prominent on a sound spectrogram, that collectively constitute the frequency spectrum of a speech sound. The relative positioning of the first and second formants, whether periodic or aperiodic, as of the o of hope at approximately 500 and 900 cycles per second, is usually sufficient to distinguish a sound from all others.

---

formant British  

/ ˈfɔːmənt /

noun

1. acoustics phonetics any of several frequency ranges within which the partials of a sound, esp a vowel sound, are at their strongest, thus imparting to the sound its own special quality, tone colour, or timbre

---

Etymology

Origin of formant

1900–05; < Latin formant- (stem of formāns ), present participle of formāre to form; see -ant

Example Sentences

But the ability to detect differences in the formant are by no means unique to our species.

From Scientific American • Dec. 6, 2012

Given the widespread association of formant frequency with mating success in both placental mammals as well as marsupials, it is possible that these preferences emerged quite early in the evolution of the mammalian clade.

From Scientific American • Dec. 6, 2012

Taken together, both the bison and koala experiments suggest that variation in formant frequencies may have initially evolved through sexual selection in order to convey information about body size.

From Scientific American • Dec. 6, 2012

It does not appear, however, that Mr. Broun's in- formant understood Danish�or the meaning of the shouts.

From Time Magazine Archive

Acrostiches formant le nom de Giles du Wes, 893, 1017.

From An Introductorie for to Lerne to Read, To Pronounce, and to Speke French Trewly by Du Wés, Giles