English Explanatory Dictionary

phoneme

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. An indivisible unit of sound in a given language. A phoneme is an abstraction of the physical speech sounds (phones) and may encompass several different phones.

Pronunciation

/ˈfəʊ.niːm/ /ˈfoʊ.nim/ En-us-phoneme.ogg /ˈfoˌnim/ /fɵˈnim/

Word forms

phoneme phonemes

Etymology

From Ancient Greek φώνημα (phṓnēma, “sound”), from φωνέω (phōnéō, “to sound”), from φωνή (phōnḗ, “sound”). By surface analysis, phone (“speech sound”) + -eme (“unit”).

Related words

allophone allophonic allophonical allophonically allophonics diaphone diaphonic diaphonical diaphonically diaphonics diaphonologic diaphonological diaphonologically diaphonology grapheme-to-phoneme -phone phone phonetic phonetical phonetically phonetics phonic phonical phonically phonics phono- phonologic phonological phonologically phonologist phonology chereme chroneme grammeme grapheme lemma lexeme listeme morpheme sememe toneme

Derived words

archiphoneme diaphoneme grapheme-phoneme correspondence metaphoneme morphophoneme phonemal phonematic phonemehood phonemic phonemical phonemically phonemicist phonemicity phonemics subphoneme
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.
Back to search All on P Russian dictionary Dahl dictionary