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In phonetics and phonology, an alveolar stop is a type of consonantal^[1] sound, made with the tongue in contact with the alveolar ridge located just behind the teeth (hence alveolar), held tightly enough to block the passage of air (hence a stop consonant).^[2] The most common sounds are the stops [t]^[3] and [d], as in English toe and doe, and the voiced nasal [n]. The 2-D finite element mode of the front part of the midsagittal tongue can stimulate the air pressed release of an alveolar stop.^[4] Alveolar consonants in children's productions have generally been demonstrated to undergo smaller vowel-related coarticulatory effects than labial and velar consonants, thus yielding consonant-specific patterns similar to those observed in adults.^[5]

The upcoming vowel target is adjusted to demand force and effort during the coarticulating process.^[6] More generally, several kinds are distinguished:

• [t], voiceless alveolar plosive
• [d], voiced alveolar plosive
• [n], voiced alveolar nasal
• [n̥], voiceless alveolar nasal
• [tʼ], alveolar ejective
• [ɗ ], voiced alveolar implosive
• [ɗ̥ ] or [tʼ↓] voiceless alveolar implosive (very rare)

Note that alveolar and dental stops are not always carefully distinguished. Acoustically, the two types of sounds are similar, and it is rare for a language to have both types.

If necessary, an alveolar consonant can be transcribed with the combining equals sign below ⟨◌͇⟩, as with ⟨t͇⟩ for the voiceless alveolar stop. A dental consonant can be transcribed with the combining bridge below ⟨t̪⟩, and a postalveolar consonant with the retraction diacritic, the combining minus sign below ⟨t̠⟩.