word
phoneme
FOH-neem
ˈfoʊniːmListen
Hear it in a clear American voice. Slow it down to catch each syllable.
Syllable breakdown
phoneme
Dictionary meaning
the smallest unit of sound in a spoken language that is capable of distinguishing one word from another; phonemes are abstract mental categories rather than physical sounds and are realised in speech as allophones — the actual acoustic variants that occur in different phonetic environments; for example, the English word bat contains three phonemes and changing any one of them produces a different word or a non-word
Learn one new pronunciation a day
Get a word, name or idiom like “phoneme” in your inbox — daily or weekly, free. Unsubscribe any time.
Something wrong? Suggest a correction