phone

views updated May 18 2018

phone1 / fōn/ • n. short for telephone. ∎  (phones) inf. headphones or earphones.• v. short for telephone.PHRASES: phone it in work or perform in a desultory fashion. phone2 • n. Phonet. a speech sound; the smallest discrete segment of sound in a stream of speech.

PHONE

views updated May 29 2018

PHONE, Also speech sound. In PHONETICS, an elementary spoken sound, the smallest segment of speech recognized by a listener as a complete vowel or consonant. Because all speakers sound slightly different, and any one speaker produces vowels and consonants differently on different occasions, the number of phones in a language is indefinitely large. They are grouped into a small number of PHONEMES or units of distinctive sound.

phone

views updated May 21 2018

phone2 (philol.) element of spoken language. XIX. — Gr. phōnḗ sound (see PHONETIC).

phone

views updated May 14 2018

phone1 abbrev. of TELEPHONE. XX.