long a

Meanings

1. The vowel sound in the words game and cake; /eɪ/. (The presence of a long vowel is often signaled in spelling by a silent e that follows it, as in the examples here, or by the fact that a subsequent consonant is single rather than doubled, as for example in gaming versus gamming).
2. The vowel sound in the English words bath and castle when pronounced with an open back unrounded vowel (/ɑː/); associated with southern England accents.