— pronunciational, pronunciatory /preuh nun"see euh tawr'ee, -tohr'ee/ , pronunciative , adj.
/preuh nun'see ay"sheuhn/ , n.
1. the act or result of producing the sounds of speech, including articulation, stress, and intonation, often with reference to some standard of correctness or acceptability.
2. an accepted standard of the sound and stress patterns of a syllable, word, etc.: He said the pronunciation of "curl" is /kerrl/ , not /koyl/ .
3. the conventional patterns of treatment of the sounds of a language: the pronunciation of French.
4. a phonetic transcription of a given word, sound, etc.: The pronunciation of "pheasant" is /fez"euhnt/ .
[ 1400-50; late ME pronunciacion pronuntiation- (s. of pronuntiatio ) delivery (of a speech), equiv. to pronuntiat ( us ) (ptp. of pronuntiare to PRONOUNCE; see -ATE 1 ) + -ion- -ION ]