Sibilant

A sibilant is a consonant in phonetics characterized by a hissing or hushing sound produced when air is directed through a narrow channel formed by the tongue and the teeth or the palate. This narrow channel concentrates energy in the higher frequencies, giving sibilants their distinctive auditory quality. Sibilants are typically fricatives and affricates. Common examples include the voiceless alveolar s, the voiced alveolar z, the voiceless postalveolar ʃ, the voiced postalveolar ʒ, and the voiceless and voiced alveolar affricates t͡s and d͡z. Some languages also have additional sibilants such as ɕ or ʑ.

Sibilants contrast with non-sibilant fricatives such as f and v, which have less high-frequency energy, and with other obstruents that do not produce a strong hiss. They may be voiceless or voiced and occur at dental, alveolar, postalveolar, and palatal places of articulation.

In language use, sibilants are often highly salient for speech perception and serve as important phonemic contrasts in many languages. Their inventories vary cross-linguistically; some languages have many sibilants, others only a few. Orthography often associates sibilants with letters like s, c, z, or with digraphs and sequences that yield sibilant sounds. The name derives from Latin sibilare, “to hiss.”