— allophonic /al'euh fon"ik/ , adj. — allophonically , adv.
/al"euh fohn'/ , n. Phonet.
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.
[ 1930-35; ALLO- + PHONE 2 ]