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Ejective consonants are a class of consonants which may contrast with aspirated or unaspirated consonants in a language.

Ejectives are voiceless consonants which are pronounced with simultaneous glottal closure. They are often described as sounding like "spat" consonants, but ejectivity is often quite weak; in some contexts, and depending upon the language they appear in, they may even sound like unaspirated consonants.

Technically speaking, ejectives are glottalic egressive sounds.

Language families which utilise ejective consonants include the Northwest, Northeast and South Caucasian families; the Athabaskan family; the Salishan family; the Afro-Asiatic family (notably Amharic and Hausa); and the Khoisan family.

The vast majority of ejective consonants noted in the world's languages are plosives or affricates. However, a very few languages utilise ejective fricatives as well; UbykhUbykh is a language of the Northwestern Caucasian group, spoken by the Ubykh people up until the early 1990s. The word is derived from waebaekh its name in the Abdzakh Adyghe (Circassian) language. It is known in linguistic literature by many names: varia (Northwest Caucasian) uses an ejective lateral fricative, the Upper Necaxa dialect of the Totonac language uses an ejective labiodental fricative, and KabardianThe Kabardian language is a Northwest Caucasian language spoken in Russia, Jordan and Turkey. It has 48 consonant phonemes, but just two phonemic vowels. Caucasian languages Languages of Jordan Languages of Russia Languages of Turkey. uses both of these in addition to ejective alveolopalatal and postalveolar fricatives. TlingitThe Tlingit ( Lingit ) language is the language of the Tlingit people of Southeast Alaska and Western Canada. It is considered to be a branch of the Na-Dene language family. Tlingit is very endangered, with about 500 native speakers still living, essentia uses ejective alveolar, lateral, velar, and uvular fricatives, and may be the only language to use the latter.