Meaning & use
phoneme
The smallest unit of sound in a language that can distinguish one word from another.
See it in a sentence
Changing the first sound of bat to a k sound creates the different word cat.
Young children gradually learn to recognize each phoneme in their native language.
A note on using this word
A phoneme is a unit of sound, not a letter; English has more phonemes than letters in its alphabet.
Words with a similar meaning
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