thorn cluster

English

Noun

thorn cluster (plural thorn clusters)

1. (linguistics) One of three consonant clusters historically believed by some scholars to have existed in Proto-Indo-European, all of which ended with the IPA sound θ (then often symbolized as þ).
2. (linguistics) Any of the reconstructed consonant clusters that have replaced the original thorn clusters in modern scholarship, which typically no longer contain the IPA /θ/.