Definition of "affricate" []

• A complex speech sound consisting of a stop consonant followed by a fricative; for example, the initial sounds of child and joy. Also called affricative. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Similarly loans such as "chamber", "champion", "chalice" don't have an initial affricate because of "mishearing" the French, but because of representing a loan before deaffrication or from a conservativ variety, or vice versa as in the last case."
• "Can we perhaps explain this by hypothesizing a Mycenaean antecedent of σῦς σίαλος, pronounced with a word-initial affricate *z-, before being transfered to Proto-Cyprian ie. a pre-Etruscan stage in the late 2nd millennium BCE?"
• "Apparently it means: sibilant is a type of fricative or affricate consonant, made by directing a jet of air through a narrow channel in the vocal tract towards the sharp edge of the teeth."