phoneme

The smallest phonetic unit in a language that is capable of conveying a distinction in meaning, as the m of mat and the b of bat in English.

Same as phone, n.

A voice-sound imagined by the insane; a hallucination of voices.

An indivisible unit of sound in a given language. A phoneme is an abstraction of the physical speech sounds (phones) and may encompass several different phones.

(linguistics) one of a small set of speech sounds that are distinguished by the speakers of a particular language