Una consonante (del latín consŏnans, -antis, participio activo de consonāre, estar en armonía) es un sonido de la lengua oral originado por el cierre o estrechamiento del tracto vocal por acercamiento o contacto de los órganos de articulación de tal manera que cause una turbulencia audible. El término consonante proviene del latín y originalmente se refería a "sonar junto con" o "sonar con" siendo la idea de que las consonantes no tenían sonido en sí mismas, ya en latín que sólo aparecían junto a una vocal. Esta sin embargo es una concepción poco afortunada de las consonantes (ya que existen lenguas donde hay palabras largas que carecen por completo de vocales). En lingüística moderna se definen las consonantes en términos de constricción del tracto vocal.

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In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are [p], pronounced with the lips; [t], pronounced with the front of the tongue; [k], pronounced with the back of the tongue; [h], pronounced in the throat; [f] and [s], pronounced by forcing air through a narrow channel (fricatives); and [m] and [n], which have air flowing through the nose (nasals). Contrasting with consonants are vowels. Since the number of possible sounds in all of the world's languages is much greater than the number of letters in any one alphabet, linguists have devised systems such as the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to assign a unique and unambiguous symbol to each attested consonant. In fact, the English alphabet has fewer consonant letters than English has consonant sounds, so digraphs like "ch", "sh", "th", and "zh" are used to extend the alphabet, and some letters and digraphs represent more than one consonant. For example, the sound spelled "th" in "this" is a different consonant than the "th" sound in "thin". (In the IPA, they are transcribed [ð] and [θ], respectively.)

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