Sample Sentences for

consonant

grouped by contextual meaning

(editor-reviewed)

She stresses the last consonants or her words.

Consonants tend to be voiced in a higher pitch and in lower intensity than vowels, so they are harder to hear.

Sometimes 'y' is a vowel and sometimes it's a consonant.  (source) Louis Sachar, Holes, 1998

He tried desperately not to think about the treacherous consonants lying ahead of him, just waiting to trip him up and stick in his throat, but when he spoke, the words came out fluently like beautiful butterflies taking flight.  (source) Malala Yousafzai, I Am Malala, 2013

They listen to a tape of consonant sounds, and then practice what they hear for ten minutes.  (source) Chang-rae Lee, Native Speaker, 1995

Prolix, quartz, quandary, slyph, rhythm, all the old tricks with consonants I could dream up or remember.  (source) Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale, 1985

Nulls are defined as any consonant followed by X, Y, or Z; any vowel followed by itself except E and 0; any—  (source) Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, 1966

A special spot-wavex-scrambler also caused his televised image, in the area immediately about his lips, to mouth the vowels and consonants beautifully.  (source) Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, 1953

He is the only dog I ever knew who could pronounce the consonant F. This is because his front teeth are crooked,  (source) John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley, 1962

She spoke in the soft slurring voice of the coastal Georgian, liquid of vowels, kind to consonants and with the barest trace of French accent.  (source) Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, 1936

...he dabbled in dialects; he had even evolved quite a brilliant table for the vowel and consonant changes from Latin into Spanish and from Spanish into Indian-Spanish.  (source) Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, 1927

As if I ever stop thinking about the girl and her confounded vowels and consonants.  (source) George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion, 1912

Or with any word having /r/ before a consonant, say /card/, /harbor/, /lord/ or /preferred/.  (source) Henry L. Mencken, The American Language, 1919

People tend to rationalize their actions to make them consonant with their beliefs of what is good.

We need a budget that is consonant with our long-term national interest.

And yet it is difficult to imagine an historical character whose activity was so unswervingly directed to a single aim; and it would be difficult to imagine any aim more worthy or more consonant with the will of the whole people.  (source) Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, 1869

Nothing could have been less consonant with Selden's mood than Van Alstyne's after-dinner aphorisms, but as long as the latter confined himself to generalities his listener's nerves were in control.  (source) Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth, 1905

"The delicacies of the Comte de Vergennes about communicating my powers [to Britain] are not perfectly consonant to my manner of thinking," Adams wrote to Congress.  (source) David McCullough, John Adams, 2002

"There was a marked tendency for any picture or story to gravitate in memory toward what was familiar to the subject in his own life, consonant with his own culture, and above all, to what had some special emotional significance for him," Allpon writes.  (source) Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point, 2000

And soon enough, that's what he was doing, nailing those vowels on the button, riding them from consonant to consonant, syllable to syllable, word to word.†  (source) Jerry Spinelli, Maniac Magee, 1990

The other troublesome word was "here," no strong consonant to hang on to, and so flat, when "here" is two mountainous ideographs.†  (source) Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior, 1975

We have not leisure to record the opinions of these rude men on a subject so consonant to their lives and experience; but little is hazarded in saying that they were quite as plausible, and far more ingenious, than half the conjectures that precede the demonstrations of science.†  (source) James Fenimore Cooper, The Deerslayer, 1841

The clergy of all the different sects hold the same language, their opinions are consonant to the laws, and the human intellect flows onwards in one sole current.†  (source) Alexis de Toqueville, Democracy In America, Volume 1, 1835

And soon enough, that's what he was doing, nailing those vowels on the button, riding them from consonant to consonant, syllable to syllable, word to word.†  (source) Jerry Spinelli, Maniac Magee, 1990

This behaviour of Mrs Bridget greatly surprised Mrs Deborah; for this well-bred woman seldom opened her lips, either to her master or his sister, till she had first sounded their inclinations, with which her sentiments were always consonant.  (source) Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, 1749

For the will of another, cannot be understood, but by his own word, or act, or by conjecture taken from his scope and purpose; which in the person of the Common-wealth, is to be supposed alwaies consonant to Equity and Reason.  (source) Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651