| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. |
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| centum |
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| SYLLABICATION: | cen·tum |
| PRONUNCIATION: |  k n t m |
| ADJECTIVE: | Designating those Indo-European languages, including the Italic, Hellenic, Celtic and Germanic subfamilies, that merged the palatal velar stops with the plain velars k, g, gh and maintained a distinction between them and the labiovelars kw, gw, gwh. | | ETYMOLOGY: | Latin, hundred (a word whose initial sound in classical Latin illustrates the preservation of the Indo-European palatal velar as a velar k). See dek in Appendix I.
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| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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