speech sound

American

noun

Phonetics.

any of the set of distinctive sounds of a given language.
any audible, elemental, acoustic event occurring in speech.

“Go” contains the speech sound “o.”
any of the sounds of the entire phonetic system of a language.

Etymology

Origin of speech sound

First recorded in 1865–70

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Early last month, a new model of the tool was released that can generate videos with speech, sound effects and ambient sounds, marking another advancement in the company’s AI efforts.

From The Wall Street Journal • Jan. 21, 2026

Finally, children were asked to match words based on whether they began or ended with the same speech sound, a task essential not only to speech development but also to reading acquisition.

From Science Daily • Jan. 3, 2024

Imagine if the film is a musical — what would Mealworm's speech sound like as a musical number?

From Salon • Jun. 9, 2023

The researchers used software to rate the magnitude of the cats’ reactions to a speech sound.

From Scientific American • Dec. 29, 2022

They were able to talk to Billy by means of a computer and a sort of electric organ which made every Earthling speech sound.

From "Slaughterhouse-Five" by Kurt Vonnegut

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023