geminate
Phonetics
adjective /ˈdʒɛmɪneɪt 
/ /ˈdʒɛmɪnət/
/ /ˈdʒɛmɪnət/Consisting of identical adjacent speech sounds; doubled: consonants motivating a short vowel were all originally geminate...
- Some geminates, however, are clearly more morphologically distinct than others are.
verb /ˈdʒɛmɪneɪt / [with object]
/ [with object]Double or repeat (a speech sound): a medial liquid is geminated over two syllables...
- Because gemination is common in Dravidian languages, double consonants in written English are often geminated: ‘sum-mer’ for summer and ‘sil-lee’ for silly.
- Like English geminates and schwas, Hebrew matres lectionis have a more ambiguous relation to speech than graphemes that code consonants, for example, and are thus coded less effectively.
- For many words, however, the most common misspelling seems to be to violate conservation of geminates, and write the word with no doubled consonants at all.
Derivatives
gemination
- This item was recorded with gemination, but the precise status of gemination in the language is not easy to determine.
- Because gemination is common in Dravidian languages, double consonants in written English are often geminated: ‘sum-mer’ for summer and ‘sil-lee’ for silly.
- He also brings up some unexpected intrusions of gemination, asking how it happened that "the Italian word ‘regata’ entered English as ‘regatta’."
Origin
Late Middle English: from Latin geminatus, past participle of geminare 'double, pair with', from geminus 'twin'.
- short-acting
- shortage
- short and sweet
- short-arm
- short-arse
- short back and sides
- short bone
- shortbread
- shortcake
- short-change
- short circuit
- shortcoming
- short commons
- short corner
- short covering
- shortcrust
- shortcrust pastry
- shortcut
- short-dated
- short-day
- short division
- short-eared owl
- shorten
- short end
- shortening