phoneme

pho·neme  (fnm)

n.

The smallest phonetic unit in a language that is capable of conveying a distinction in meaning, as the m of mat and the b of bat in English.

---

[French phonème, from Greek phnma, phnmat-, utterance, sound produced, from phnein, to produce a sound, from phn, sound, voice; see bh-² in Indo-European roots.]

---

phoneme [ˈfəʊniːm]

n

(Linguistics) Linguistics one of the set of speech sounds in any given language that serve to distinguish one word from another. A phoneme may consist of several phonetically distinct articulations, which are regarded as identical by native speakers, since one articulation may be substituted for another without any change of meaning. Thus /p/ and /b/ are separate phonemes in English because they distinguish such words as pet and bet, whereas the light and dark /l/ sounds in little are not separate phonemes since they may be transposed without changing meaning

[via French from Greek phōnēma sound, speech]

Thesaurus

Noun

1.

phoneme - (linguistics) one of a small set of speech sounds that are distinguished by the speakers of a particular language linguistics - the scientific study of language speech sound, phone, sound - (phonetics) an individual sound unit of speech without concern as to whether or not it is a phoneme of some language allophone - (linguistics) any of various acoustically different forms of the same phoneme

Translations

phoneme [ˈfəʊniːm] N → fonema m

phoneme [ˈfəʊniːm] n → phonème m
phone number n → numéro m de téléphone
phone tap n → écoute f téléphonique
He assured them that ministers were not subjected to phone taps → Il leur a assuré que les ministres n'étaient pas placés sous écoute téléphonique.
phone tapping n → écoutes fpl téléphoniques

phoneme

n → Phonem nt

phoneme [ˈfəʊniːm] n (Ling) → fonema m

---

phoneme [ˈfəʊniːm] n (Ling) → fonema m