sb. and a. [a. L. spīrant-, spīrans, pres. pple. of spīrāre to breathe. So F. spirant, It. spirante, Sp. and Pg. espirante.] a. sb. A consonant that admits of a continued emission of some amount of breath, so that the sound is capable of being prolonged. b. adj. Pronounced with an accompanying emission of breath.
1866. Whitney, in Jrnl. Amer. Oriental Soc., VIII. 348. If … any one of them … has passed over into a spirant, it can never recover an explosive character.
1882–3. Schaff, Encycl. Relig. Knowl., III. 2155/1. The Semitic alphabet is … characterized by fulness of guttural, uvular, and spirant consonants.
1894. W. M. Lindsay, Latin Lang., 51. The change from the bilabial to the labiodental spirant.
Hence Spirantic a., Spirantize v.
1896. Classical Rev., X. 59. In support of the spirantic theory, we have the difference of phonetic law in Sanskrit and Greek.
1896. Academy, 21 March, 243/1. The author might safely have claimed the spirantic pronunciation as existent in Athens in the fourth century B.C. Ibid., 243/2. This was the point in the language at which the spirantising tendency would first attack the χ and the φ.
