 Plosive

A plosive is an oral stop consonant: articulators form a complete oral closure, pressure can build behind it, and releasing the closure can produce a brief burst. During the closure, the nasal airflow route is normally closed. This distinguishes the mechanism from a nasal consonant with the same oral place of articulation.^[ref]

The sounds [p] and [b] both use a bilabial closure, while differing in their usual voicing classification. A recording of a released [p] can show a closure interval followed by a burst and the following sound. The release need not always be audibly strong, so an absent obvious burst alone does not show that no closure occurred. Articulation and the observed acoustic trace provide complementary evidence.