allophone

[ al-uh-fohn ]

nounPhonetics.
  1. any of the members of a class of speech sounds that, taken together, are commonly felt to be a phoneme, as the t-sounds of toe, stow, tree, hatpin, catcall, cats, catnip, button, metal, city; a speech sound constituting one of the phonetic manifestations or variants of a particular phoneme.

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Origin of allophone

1
First recorded in 1930–35; allo- + phone2

Other words from allophone

  • al·lo·phon·ic [al-uh-fon-ik], /ˌæl əˈfɒn ɪk/, adjective
  • al·lo·phon·i·cal·ly, adverb

Words Nearby allophone

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

British Dictionary definitions for allophone

allophone

/ (ˈæləˌfəʊn) /


noun
  1. any of several speech sounds that are regarded as contextual or environmental variants of the same phoneme. In English the aspirated initial (p) in pot and the unaspirated (p) in spot are allophones of the phoneme /p/

  2. Canadian a Canadian whose native language is neither French nor English

Derived forms of allophone

  • allophonic (ˌæləˈfɒnɪk), adjective

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012