Phonetic Definition
fə-nĕtĭk
adjective
Of speech sounds or the production or transcription of these.
Webster's New World
Of phonetics.
Webster's New World
Of, relating to, or being features of pronunciation that are not phonemically distinctive in a language, as aspiration of consonants or vowel length in English.
American Heritage
Conforming to pronunciation.
Phonetic spelling.
Webster's New World
Of or involving the relatively small differences between related speech sounds, which can be perceived but do not change meaning.
The differences between the sounds represented by p in “tip” and “pit” are phonetic, since substituting one for the other would not change the meanings of the two words.
Webster's New World
noun
(linguistics) In such logographic writing systems as the Chinese writing system, the portion of a character (if any) that provides an indication of its pronunciation; contrasted with radical.
Wiktionary
Origin of Phonetic
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New Latin phōnēticus representing speech sounds from Greek phōnētikos vocal from phōnētos to be spoken from phōnein to produce a sound from phōnē sound, voice bhā-2 in Indo-European roots
From American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition
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