I. fōˈned.]ik, fəˈ-, -et], ]ēk\ adjective
Etymology: New Latin phoneticus, from Greek phōnētikos, from phōnētos to be spoken (from phōnein to sound, speak, from phōnē sound, voice) + -ikos -ic — more at ban
1.
a. : of or relating to spoken language or speech sounds
phonetic developments in English since Chaucer's time
phonetic differences between ancient and modern Greek
b. : of or relating to the science of phonetics
phonetic texts
phonetic laboratory apparatus
2. : representing the sounds and other phenomena (as stress, pitch) of speech
phonetic symbols
a. : constituting an alteration of the ordinary orthographic spelling that better represents its value in the spoken language, that employs only characters of the regular alphabet, and that is used in a context of conventionally spelled orthographies
thru and nite are fairly common phonetic spellings
b. : constituting those characters in some ancient writings (as Egyptian) that represent speech sounds as distinguished from such as are ideographic or pictorial
c. : representing speech sounds by means of symbols that have one value only
in this phonetic system g always has the value of g in go, never of g in gem
d. : employing for speech sounds more than the minimum number of symbols necessary to represent the significant differences in a speaker's speech
the minutely phonetic transcriptions of this linguistic atlas
— contrasted with phonemic
II. noun
( -s )
: a Chinese character used with a radical to form a new character whose pronunciation it suggests