phoneme

/ˌfoʊˈnim/

/ˈfʌʊnim/

Other forms: phonemes

The very smallest unit of sound in any language is called a phoneme. Changing a phoneme in a word changes the way that word is pronounced, as well as its meaning.

In English, phonemes include short and long vowels, consonants, and other sounds like th and sp. The distinct sounds associated with each of the 44 phonemes in English help to differentiate words and give clues to their meaning and pronunciation. The word phoneme was coined in 1889 from the French phonème, which came from the Greek phōnēma, "a sound made."

Definitions of phoneme

1. noun

   (linguistics) one of a small set of speech sounds that are distinguished by the speakers of a particular language
   types:

   allophone

   (linguistics) any of various acoustically different forms of the same phoneme

   type of:

   phone, sound, speech sound

   (phonetics) an individual sound unit of speech without concern as to whether or not it is a phoneme of some language