Intervocalic consonant

In phonetics and phonology, an intervocalic consonant is a consonant that occurs in the middle of a word, between two vowels. Intervocalic consonants are associated with lenition, a phonetic process that causes consonants to weaken and eventually disappear entirely. An example of such a change in English is intervocalic alveolar flapping, a process (especially in North American English and Australian English) that, impressionistically speaking, turns t into d, causing (e.g.) metal and batter to sound like medal and badder, respectively. (More correctly, both /t/ and /d/ turn into the alveolar tap [ɾ].)