Obstruant (definition)

An obstruent is a sound that is made with complete or considerable obstruction the the vocal tract. Groups of sounds considered to be obstruents are stops, affricates and fricatives. An example of a obstruent would be the fricative “th” and stops “p” and “t.”

References

Matthews, P. H. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Crystal, David. A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. The language library. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1997.