In phonetics, a lateral release is the release of a plosive consonant into a lateral consonant. Such sounds are transcribed in the IPA with a superscript ⟨l⟩, for example as in English spotless. In Old English words such as middle/middel in which, historically, the tongue made separate contacts with the alveolar ridge for the and, , many speakers today make only one tongue contact. That is, the is laterally released directly into the :. While this is a minor phonetic detail in English, it may be more important in other languages.