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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

rhotic.

That allows the phoneme /ɹ/ to be followed by a vowel, as in bar (/bɑːɹ/) and bard or barred (/bɑːɹd/); (of an English speaker) who speaks with such an accent.

6 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

adj/ˈɹəʊ.tɪk/Received-Pronunciation[ˈɹəʊ̯.t(ʰ)ɪk]Received-Pronunciation/ˈɹoʊ.tɪk/General-American[ˈɹoʊ̯.ɾɪk]General-American
  1. That allows the phoneme /ɹ/ to be followed by a vowel, as in bar (/bɑːɹ/) and bard or barred (/bɑːɹd/); (of an English speaker) who speaks with such an accent.

    not-comparable
    Rhotic speech is common in Ireland, Scotland, much of the United States, Canada, West Country England, and many parts of the north and west of England.
  2. Having a sound quality associated with the letter R; having the sound of any of certain IPA symbols, including /ɹ/, /ɻ/, /ɚ/, /ɝ/ and /r/.

    not-comparable
    In the IPA, a rhotic vowel (aka R-coloured vowel, retroflex vowel, vocalic r or rhotacised vowel) is indicated by the affixing of a hook diacritic ( ˞ ) to the right of the regular symbol for the vowel. The rhotic consonants are /r/, /ɾ/, /ɹ/, /ɻ/, /ʀ/, /ʁ/, /ɽ/ and /ɺ/.
Where this word comes from

Back-formation from rhotacism, coined in 1968 by John C. Wells.

noun/ˈɹəʊ.tɪk/Received-Pronunciation[ˈɹəʊ̯.t(ʰ)ɪk]Received-Pronunciation/ˈɹoʊ.tɪk/General-American[ˈɹoʊ̯.ɾɪk]General-American
  1. A rhotic consonant or rhotic vowel (R-coloured vowel).

Where this word comes from

Back-formation from rhotacism, coined in 1968 by John C. Wells.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.