The story
- Ancient Greek · derived fromμονόφθογγος
- English todaymonophthong
From Ancient Greek μονόφθογγος (monóphthongos), from μόνος (mónos, “single”) + φθόγγος (phthóngos, “sound”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
monophthong
Today it means: A vowel (in the sense of a sound rather than a letter of the alphabet) that has the same sound throughout its pronunciation, such as the short vowels in "pap", "pep", "pip", "pop" and "pup", as opposed to a diphthong (eg, /aɪ/, the vowel in "pipe") or a triphthong (eg, /aɪə/, the sound in the non-rhotic pronunciation of "pyre"). Full definition →
Ancient Greek μονόφθογγος