Word of the Day
: August 26, 2016guttural
playWhat It Means
1 : articulated in the throat
2 : velar
3 : being or marked by utterance that is strange, unpleasant, or disagreeable
guttural in Context
The only response we could get from him was an inarticulate guttural grunt.
"The guttural yells echoing off New Jersey's Lake Mercer conveyed the gravity of college rowing's biggest day Sunday: the Intercollegiate Rowing Championship." — Brian Towey, The Seattle Times, 6 June 2016
Did You Know?
Though it is now used to describe many sounds or utterances which strike the listener as harsh or disagreeable, the adjective guttural was originally applied only to sounds and utterances produced in the throat. This is reflected in the word's Latin root—guttur, meaning "throat." Despite the similarity in sound, guttural is not related to the English word gutter, which comes (by way of Anglo-French) from Latin gutta, meaning "drop."
Test Your Vocabulary with M-W Quizzes
Test Your Vocabulary
Fill in the blanks to create an adjective that describes something having a harsh sound: _ ac _ _ h _ no _ s.
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