soft sign

English
WOTD – 12 June 2021

Etymology
The uppercase and lowercase versions of the soft sign.

Calque of Russian мя́гкий знак (mjáxkij znak),[1] from мя́гкий (mjáxkij, “palatal, palatized, soft”) + знак (znak, “mark, sign”).

Pronunciation
  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˌsɒftˈsaɪn/
  • Audio (Southern England)(file)
  • (General American) IPA(key): /ˌsɔftˈsaɪn/
  • Rhymes: -aɪn

Noun

soft sign (plural soft signs)

  1. The Cyrillic letter Ь/ь (transliterated in English with an apostrophe (’) or prime (′)), which in modern languages using the Cyrillic alphabet serves to denote a soft (palatized) consonant.
    Synonyms: front jer, front yer
    Antonym: hard sign

Hypernyms

Translations

References
  1. “soft sign, n.” under “soft, adj.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, March 2021; “soft sign, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

Further reading
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