allophone

American  

[al-uh-fohn] / ˈæl əˌfoʊn /

noun

Phonetics.

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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allophone British  

/ ˌæləˈfɒnɪk, 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. a Canadian whose native language is neither French nor English

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Other Word Forms

• allophonic
  adjective
• allophonically
  adverb

Etymology

Origin of allophone

First recorded in 1930–35; allo- + phone ²

Compare meaning

How does allophone compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:

• phoneme vs. allophone