HOW TO PRONOUNCE
vanilla
/vəˈnɪlə/
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American Pronunciation Guide · 0:47
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Give “nil” the strongest beat.
Use three syllables and light vowels at both ends. Use the short i of sit in the middle, and let the double l spelling represent a single connected l sound.
3 syllables · Stress on syllable 2
TRY SAYING
“The custard contains vanilla.”
APG practice sentence · CC BY-SA 4.0
CMU Pronouncing Dictionary ↗What does vanilla mean?
noun
- Any tropical climbing orchid of the genus Vanilla (especially Vanilla planifolia), bearing podlike fruit yielding an extract used in flavoring food or in perfumes.
- The fruit or bean of the vanilla plant.
- The extract of the fruit of the vanilla plant.
More meanings (10)
noun
- The distinctive fragrant flavour/flavor characteristic of vanilla extract.
- Any artificially produced homologue of vanilla extract, principally vanillin produced from lignin from the paper industry or from petrochemicals.
- (slang) Someone who is not into fetishism.
- (slang) An unmodded version of a game.
- A yellowish-white colour, like that of vanilla ice cream.
- (derogatory) A white person.
adjective
- Of vanilla.
- Standard, plain, default, unmodified, basic.
- Not kinky, not involving BDSM.
- Plain; conventional; unimaginative.
Definitions regrouped for readability · CC BY-SA 4.0
IPA pronunciation
/vəˈnɪlə/
Pronunciation used in the listening tip.
CMU Pronouncing Dictionary ↗Pronunciation varies by speaker and region. About these dictionary pronunciations.
In the pages of books
See this word in context.
The cakes were delightful to look at -- the finest puff-pastry, with layers of vanilla custard and cream.
Anne fled to the pantry and returned with a small bottle partially filled with a brown liquid and labeled yellowly, “Best Vanilla.”
More book examples (3)
The trunks of these last are covered with very odoriferous plants of vanilla, which in general flower only in the month of April.
The choice of 70 characters is arbitrary and was made to avoid overly long and therefore less readable lines in the Plain Vanilla text.
Orteschi met a young lady who, without any possibility of fraud, exhaled the strong odor of vanilla from the commissures of her fingers.