adj.
Pronunciation: f ə - ' ne-tik
Function: adjective
Etymology: New Latin phoneticus, from Greek ph ō n ē tikos, from ph ō nein to sound with the voice, from ph ō n ē voice
Date: 1819
1 a : of or relating to spoken language or speech sounds b : of or relating to the science of phonetics
2 : representing the sounds and other phenomena of speech: as a : constituting an alteration of ordinary spelling that better represents the spoken language, that employs only characters of the regular alphabet, and that is used in a context of conventional spelling b : representing speech sounds by means of symbols that have one value only c : employing for speech sounds more than the minimum number of symbols necessary to represent the significant differences in a speaker's speech
– pho · net · i · cal · ly \ -ti-k( ə -)l ē \ adverb