antiformant
|an-ti-for-mant|
🇺🇸
/ˌæn.tɪˈfɔr.mənt/
🇬🇧
/ˌæn.tɪˈfɔː.mənt/
anti-resonance; spectral notch
Etymology
'antiformant' originates from English, formed by the prefix 'anti-' (from Greek 'anti' meaning 'against') + 'formant' (from French 'formant', ultimately from Latin 'formare' meaning 'to form').
'formant' arose in early 20th-century phonetics (from French 'formant' < Latin 'formare'), and 'antiformant' was coined later in mid-20th-century acoustic and speech-science literature as a compound opposing 'formant'.
Initially, 'formant' meant 'that which forms' and came to denote resonant frequency bands in speech; 'antiformant' was created to denote the opposing phenomenon (attenuation or spectral zero) and has remained a specialized technical term.
Meanings by Part of Speech
Noun 1
a spectral zero or antiresonance in the transfer function of the vocal tract or an acoustic system that produces a pronounced attenuation (notch) at a particular frequency; commonly observed in nasal sounds and certain filter interactions in speech acoustics.
The spectrogram showed a clear antiformant around 1 kHz that reduced the energy of the neighboring formant.
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Noun 2
in signal processing and electrical engineering, a frequency at which a system's output is minimized due to a zero in the transfer function (an antiresonance), often produced by the interaction of resonators or filters.
The filter design avoided placing an antiformant inside the desired passband.
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Last updated: 2025/09/01 08:08