adjective
- not representing the sounds of speech; not based on pronunciation
Usage: linguistics; education
Examples
- Chinese characters are largely nonphonetic symbols.
- The spelling of ‘knight’ is nonphonetic in modern English.
- Students struggled with the nonphonetic spelling patterns.
- Egyptian hieroglyphs include both phonetic and nonphonetic elements.
- The teacher explained why some words have nonphonetic spellings.
- Nonphonetic writing systems require memorization of symbols.