suprasegmental

American  

[soo-pruh-seg-men-tl] / ˌsu prə sɛgˈmɛn tl /

adjective

1. above, beyond, or in addition to a segment.

2. Linguistics.  pertaining to or noting features of speech, as stress, pitch, and length, that accompany individual consonants and vowels and may extend over more than one such segmental element; pertaining to junctural and prosodic features.

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noun

1. a suprasegmental feature.

suprasegmental British  

/ ˌsjuː-, ˌsuːprəsɛɡˈmɛntəl /

adjective

1. linguistics denoting those features of a sound or sequence of sounds that accompany rather than form part of the consecutive segments of a word or sentence, as for example stress and pitch in English

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Other Word Forms

• suprasegmentally adverb

Etymology

Origin of suprasegmental

First recorded in 1940–45; supra- + segmental