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diaphone

[dahy-uh-fohn]
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noun
  1. a foghorn producing a low-pitched, penetrating signal of two tones.
  2. Phonetics.
    1. a phoneme in one dialect corresponding to a similar but phonetically different phoneme in a related dialect.
    2. a group of sounds comprising all the phonetically different dialectal variants of a given phoneme in a language: The broad a and flat a of “half” are members of a single diaphone.
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Origin of diaphone

First recorded in 1905–10; dia- + -phone
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018

Examples from the Web for diaphone

Historical Examples

  • In the Pedal department no reed or flue pipe can begin to compare with a Diaphone, either in attack or in volume of tone.

    The Recent Revolution in Organ Building

    George Laing Miller

British Dictionary definitions for diaphone

diaphone

noun
    1. the set of all realizations of a given phoneme in a language
    2. one of any number of corresponding sounds in different dialects of a language
  2. a foghorn that emits a two-toned signal
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Word Origin

C20: from dia (lect) + phone ²
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