Noun | 1. | speech sound - (phonetics) an individual sound unit of speech without concern as to whether or not it is a phoneme of some language phonetics - the branch of acoustics concerned with speech processes including its production and perception and acoustic analysis language unit, linguistic unit - one of the natural units into which linguistic messages can be analyzed utterance, vocalization - the use of uttered sounds for auditory communication phoneme - (linguistics) one of a small set of speech sounds that are distinguished by the speakers of a particular language vowel, vowel sound - a speech sound made with the vocal tract open consonant - a speech sound that is not a vowel orinasal, orinasal phone - a speech sound produced with both the oral and nasal passages open (as French nasal vowels) sonant, voiced sound - a speech sound accompanied by sound from the vocal cords |