Egressive sound

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title: "Egressive sound" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["phonetics", "consonants-by-airstream"] description: "Speech sound made by exhaling air" topic_path: "linguistics" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egressive_sound" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Speech sound made by exhaling air ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox IPA"]

Field	Value
above	Egressive
ipa symbol	↑◌
ipa number	662
unicode	U+2191
::

| above = Egressive | ipa symbol = ↑◌ | ipa number = 662 | unicode = U+2191 In articulatory phonetics, egressive sounds are produced by an airstream mechanism that pushes air out through the mouth or nose. The three types of egressive sounds are pulmonic egressive (from the lungs), glottalic egressive (from the glottis), and lingual (velaric) egressive (from the tongue). The opposite of an egressive sound is an ingressive sound, in which the airstream flows inward through the mouth or nose.

Pulmonic egressive

Pulmonic egressive sounds are those in which the air stream is created by the lungs, ribs, and diaphragm. The majority of sounds in most languages, including all those on the IPA vowel chart and main consonant chart, are both pulmonic and egressive. Pulmonic egressive sounds are found in all spoken languages.

Glottalic egressive

Glottalic egressive sounds are known as ejectives.

Lingual egressive

The lingual egressive, also known as velaric egressive, involves a double closure similar to that of the lingual ingressive sounds known as clicks, but with airflow in the opposite direction. With the velum closed, the speaker forces air out of the mouth using either the tongue or cheeks (though technically the latter would be buccal speech), as in the French expression of dismissal. While not known to be used for normal vocabulary in any human language, apart from the extinct Australian ritual language Damin (e.g. pʼnyurru 'wife'), a variation of this airstream mechanism is known to musicians as part of circular breathing.

References

References

1. Ogden, Richard. ''An Introduction to English Phonetics''. Edinburgh University Press, 2009, p. 154.
2. Ladefoged, Peter. (2006). "A Course in Phonetics". Thomson Wadsworth.

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