1. Love of learning and literature; the branch of knowledge that deals with the historical, linguistic, interpretative, and critical aspects of literature; literary or classical scholarship. Now chiefly U.S.

3. The branch of knowledge that deals with the structure, historical development, and relationships of languages or language families; the historical study of the phonology and morphology of languages; historical linguistics.This sense has never been current in the United States, and is increasingly rare in British use. Linguistics is now the more usual term for the study of the structure of language, and (often with qualifying adjective, as historical, comparative, etc.) has generally replaced philology.

Originally a sound or letter that had to be accompanied by a vowel: hence the term (Latin consonans ‘sounding with’). Now generally of phonological units which form parts of a syllable other than its nucleus , or whose primary role, at least, is to do so. E.g. [n] is a consonant in English, whose primary roles are as the onset of a syllable (e.g. in no) or as its coda (e.g. in on): its role as a nucleus can be seen as secondary.

In phonetic terms, most consonants are sounds in whose production the flow of air is obstructed at some point in the mouth, throat, or larynx, at least sufficiently to cause audible friction: i.e. they are produced with a degree of stricture greater than open approximation. But no phonetic definition will quite match the phonology of all languages; hence a distinction, in many accounts, between consonants as units in phonology, and contoids.

vowel

Originally, in ancient accounts of Greek and Latin, of a minimal unit of speech that could be produced on its own and could, on its own, form a syllable: e.g. [i] in Latin could form the one-syllable word i ‘go!’. Now, more generally or more precisely, of one that is produced with open approximation and that characteristically forms the nucleus ⁽²⁾ of a syllable: e.g. [a] in bat [bat], [i] in bee [bi], [] in are []. Distinguished as such from syllabic consonants: e.g. [l] as, uncharacteristically, a nucleus in battle ['bat]. Also from semivowels, e.g. [w] as the onset of a syllable in we [wi], or approximants.

diphthong

A vowel whose quality changes perceptibly in one direction within a single syllable: e.g. [a] in house, whose articulation changes from relatively open to relatively close and back. Diphthongs are falling or rising according to which phase is more prominent.

A distinction might be drawn in principle between a phonetic diphthong and a diphthong in phonology, which would consist of a sequence of two vowel phonemes. Thus the [a] of house is phonetically diphthongal, but different phonologists have described it variously as a single phoneme, as a vowel plus another vowel, or as a vowel plus a semivowel. Cf. monophthong; triphthong.