palatal

palatal
    adj 1: relating to or lying near the palate; "palatal index";
           "the palatine tonsils" [syn: {palatal}, {palatine}]
    2: produced with the front of the tongue near or touching the
       hard palate (as `y') or with the blade of the tongue near the
       hard palate (as `ch' in `chin' or `j' in `gin') [syn:
       {palatal}, {palatalized}, {palatalised}]
    n 1: a semivowel produced with the tongue near the palate (like
         the initial sound in the English word `yeast')
    

Palatal \Pal"a*tal\, a. [Cf. F. palatal.]
   1. Of or pertaining to the palate; palatine; as, the palatal
      bones.
      [1913 Webster]

   2. (Phonetics) Uttered by the aid of the palate; -- said of
      certain sounds, as the sound of k in kirk.
      [1913 Webster]
    

Palatal \Pal"a*tal\, n. (Phon.)
   A sound uttered, or a letter pronounced, by the aid of the
   palate, as the letters k and y.
   [1913 Webster]
    

125 Moby Thesaurus words for "palatal":
      accented, allophone, alveolar, apical, apico-alveolar,
      apico-dental, articulated, articulation, aspiration, assimilated,
      assimilation, back, barytone, bilabial, broad, cacuminal, central,
      cerebral, check, checked, close, consonant, consonantal,
      continuant, dental, diphthong, dissimilated, dissimilation, dorsal,
      epenthetic vowel, explosive, flat, front, glide, glossal, glottal,
      glottalization, guttural, hard, heavy, high, intonated, labial,
      labialization, labiodental, labiovelar, laryngeal, lateral, lax,
      light, lingual, liquid, low, manner of articulation, mid,
      modification, monophthong, monophthongal, morphophoneme, mute,
      muted, narrow, nasal, nasalized, occlusive, open, oxytone,
      palatalized, parasitic vowel, peak, pharyngeal, pharyngealization,
      pharyngealized, phone, phoneme, phonemic, phonetic, phonic, pitch,
      pitched, plosive, posttonic, prothetic vowel, retroflex, rounded,
      segmental phoneme, semivowel, soft, sonant, sonority, speech sound,
      stop, stopped, stressed, strong, surd, syllabic, syllabic nucleus,
      syllabic peak, syllable, tense, thick, throaty, tonal, tonic,
      transition sound, triphthong, twangy, unaccented, unrounded,
      unstressed, velar, vocable, vocalic, vocoid, voice, voiced,
      voiced sound, voiceless, voiceless sound, voicing, vowel,
      vowellike, weak, wide