A vowel change that changes the meaning of a word without substantially changing it otherwise
The phenomenon In the context of Indo-European languages was first recorded more than 2000 years ago by Sanskrit grammarians. It was described in Europe in the early 18th century by the Dutch linguist Lambert ten Kate, and the term "ablaut" was coined in the early nineteenth century by linguist Jacob Grimm (the elder of the Brothers Grimm). Examples are sing/sang/sung/song, ride/rode, or fly/flew/flow.