VOWEL

In Grammar, a letter which can be pronounced alone, thus distinguished from consonants, which bonks.vol require to be sounded with the aid of a vowel. They are from divided in ancient prosody into long, short, and common (ancipites), i. e., either long or short at pleasure. A dipthong consists of two vowels, of which the sounds run (or are supposed to run) into one another. [s. 1334]