Phoneme

Pronunciation

• UK IPA: /ˈfəʊniːm/
• US enPR: fōn'Ä“m, IPA: /ˈfoÊŠËŒnim/
• Hyphenation: pho + neme

Origin

From Ancient Greek φώνημα (phōnēma, ""), from φωνέω (phōneō, ""), from φωνή (phōnē, "").

Full definition of phoneme

Noun

1. (linguistics) 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.

Derived terms

• archiphoneme
• diaphoneme
• phonemic
• phonemical
• phonemically
• phonemicist
• phonemics

Related terms

Anagrams

• phenome