allophone

UK:**UK and possibly other pronunciationsUK and possibly other pronunciations/ˈæləˌfəʊn/US:USA pronunciation: respellingUSA pronunciation: respelling(alə fōn′)


WordReference Random House Unabridged Dictionary of American English © 2026
al•lo•phone  (alə fōn′),USA pronunciation n. [Phonet.]
  1. Phoneticsany 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.
  • allo- + phone2 1930–35
al•lo•phon•ic  (al′ə fonik),USA pronunciation adj.  al′lo•phoni•cal•ly, adv. 

Collins Concise English Dictionary © HarperCollins Publishers::
allophone /ˈæləˌfəʊn/ n
  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. Canadian a Canadian whose native language is neither French nor English
allophonic /ˌæləˈfɒnɪk/ adj
'allophone' also found in these entries (note: many are not synonyms or translations):

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