allophone
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
1Other 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
/ (ˈæləˌfəʊn) /
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/
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
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