allophone

[ al-uh-fohn ]

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.

allophone

/ 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

Derived Forms

• allophonic, adjective

Other Words From

• al·lo·phon·ic [al-, uh, -, fon, -ik], adjective
• allo·phoni·cal·ly adverb

Word History and Origins

Origin of allophone¹

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