phonogram

American  

[foh-nuh-gram] / ˈfoʊ nəˌgræm /

noun

1. Linguistics. a symbol that represents a speech sound, syllable, or other sequence of speech sounds without reference to meaning, such as a letter in the Latin alphabet.

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phonogram British  

/ ˈfəʊnəˌɡræm /

noun

1. any written symbol standing for a sound, syllable, morpheme, or word

2. a sequence of written symbols having the same sound in a variety of different words, for example, ough in bought, ought, and brought

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• phonogrammically
  adverb
• phonogramically
  adverb
• phonogrammic
  adjective
• phonogramic
  adjective

Etymology

Origin of phonogram

First recorded in 1855–60; phono- + -gram ¹

Example Sentences

The musical accompaniment is provided by a recorded phonogram synthesizer.

From Seattle Times • Sep. 14, 2021

Some ten years after the late Thomas Alva Edison first recorded the human voice* on tinfoil in 1877, he sent the foregoing jingly "phonogram," on a wax cylinder, to Colonel George E. Gouraud in London.

From Time Magazine Archive

I expect that an agreement may be made with the post-office authorities enabling phonogram boxes to be sent at the same rate as a letter.

From Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 Volume 1, Number 11 by Buchanan, Joseph R. (Joseph Rodes)

But even the wax phonogram may be used over and over again, hundreds of times, without diminishing the fidelity of the reproduction.

From Heroes of the Telegraph by Munro, John

A representative of the phones married into the gram family, and we have phonogram.

From The Century Vocabulary Builder by Bachelor, Joseph M. (Joseph Morris)