[1] : The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48

palatal \pal"atal\, a. cf. f. palatal.
   1. of or pertaining to the palate; palatine; as, the palatal
      bones.
      1913 webster

   2. phonetics uttered by the aid of the palate; -- said of
      certain sounds, as the sound of k in kirk.
      1913 webster

[2] : The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48

palatal \pal"atal\, n. phon.
   a sound uttered, or a letter pronounced, by the aid of the
   palate, as the letters k and y.
   1913 webster

[3] : WordNet (r) 2.0

palatal
     adj 1: relating to or lying near the palate; "palatal index"; "the
            palatine tonsils" syn: palatine
     2: produced with the front of the tongue near or touching the
        hard palate as `y' or with the blade of the tongue near
        the hard palate as `ch' in `chin' or `j' in `gin' syn:
        palatalized, palatalised
     n : a semivowel produced with the tongue near the palate like
         the initial sound in the english word `yeast'
see also:
palatine palatalized palatalised 

[4] : Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0

125 moby thesaurus words for "palatal":
   accented, allophone, alveolar, apical, apico-alveolar,
   apico-dental, articulated, articulation, aspiration, assimilated,
   assimilation, back, barytone, bilabial, broad, cacuminal, central,
   cerebral, check, checked, close, consonant, consonantal,
   continuant, dental, diphthong, dissimilated, dissimilation, dorsal,
   epenthetic vowel, explosive, flat, front, glide, glossal, glottal,
   glottalization, guttural, hard, heavy, high, intonated, labial,
   labialization, labiodental, labiovelar, laryngeal, lateral, lax,
   light, lingual, liquid, low, manner of articulation, mid,
   modification, monophthong, monophthongal, morphophoneme, mute,
   muted, narrow, nasal, nasalized, occlusive, open, oxytone,
   palatalized, parasitic vowel, peak, pharyngeal, pharyngealization,
   pharyngealized, phone, phoneme, phonemic, phonetic, phonic, pitch,
   pitched, plosive, posttonic, prothetic vowel, retroflex, rounded,
   segmental phoneme, semivowel, soft, sonant, sonority, speech sound,
   stop, stopped, stressed, strong, surd, syllabic, syllabic nucleus,
   syllabic peak, syllable, tense, thick, throaty, tonal, tonic,
   transition sound, triphthong, twangy, unaccented, unrounded,
   unstressed, velar, vocable, vocalic, vocoid, voice, voiced,
   voiced sound, voiceless, voiceless sound, voicing, vowel,
   vowellike, weak, wide

Palatal >> P Words
Palatal, definition of term: Palatal
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