syllable

n. segment of speech uttered with a single impulse of air; smallest amount of speech or writing

A syllable (Ancient Greek: ) is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. It is typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants).Syllables are often considered the phonological "building blocks" of words. They can influence the rhythm of a language, its  prosody, its poetic meter, its stress patterns, etc.A word that consists of a single syllable (like English cat) is called a monosyllable (such a word is monosyllabic), while a word consisting of two syllables (like monkey) is called a disyllable (such a word is disyllabic). A word consisting of three syllables (such as indigent) is called a trisyllable (the adjective form is trisyllabic). A word consisting of more than three syllables (such as intelligence) is called a polysyllable (and could be described as polysyllabic), although this term is often used to describe words of two syllables or more.
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Noun
1. a unit of spoken language larger than a phoneme; "the word `pocket' has two syllables"
(hypernym) language unit, linguistic unit
(hyponym) penult, penultima, penultimate
(part-holonym) word
(derivation) syllabify, syllabicate, syllabize, syllabise

n. syllable, segment of speech uttered with a single impulse of air

(v. t.)
To pronounce the syllables of; to utter; to articulate.
  

(n.)
In writing and printing, a part of a word, separated from the rest, and capable of being pronounced by a single impulse of the voice. It may or may not correspond to a syllable in the spoken language.
  

(n.)
An elementary sound, or a combination of elementary sounds, uttered together, or with a single effort or impulse of the voice, and constituting a word or a part of a word. In other terms, it is a vowel or a diphtong, either by itself or flanked by one or more consonants, the whole produced by a single impulse or utterance. One of the liquids, l, m, n, may fill the place of a vowel in a syllable. Adjoining syllables in a word or phrase need not to be marked off by a pause, but only by such an abatement and renewal, or reenforcement, of the stress as to give the feeling of separate impulses.
  

(n.)
A small part of a sentence or discourse; anything concise or short; a particle.