phoneme
phon·eme [phoneme phonemes] BrE [ˈfəʊniːm] NAmE [ˈfoʊniːm] noun (phonetics)
any one of the set of smallest units of speech in a language that distinguish one word from another. In English, the /[s] / in sip and the /[z] / in zip represent two different phonemes.
Derived Word: ↑phonemic
Word Origin:
late 19th cent.: from French phonème, from Greek phōnēma ‘sound, speech’, from phōnein ‘speak’.
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