Grapheme

/ˈɡɹæ.fiːm/ · noun

Meaning

A fundamental unit of a writing system, corresponding to (for example) letters in the English alphabet or jamo in Korean hangul..

Definitions by Sense

1. A fundamental unit of a writing system, corresponding to (for example) letters in the English alphabet or jamo in Korean hangul.
2. (Unicode) A sequence of one or more code points that are processed and displayed as a single graphical unit of a writing system.
3. (linguistics) In alphabetic writing, the shortest group of letters composing a phoneme.

Example Sentences

For instance, it is convenient to refer to a single Chinese character as being a grapheme in some contexts.

Even so, it's important for Unicode-friendly applications to deal with text in their user interfaces as a series of graphemes and not as a series of Unicode code points […]

The term for a letter or combination of letters which represents a particular sound is a “grapheme”. Languages like Italian and Serbo-Croatian have very simple “grapheme–phoneme conversion” rules.

In terms of specific graphemes, Table 2.5 identifies the most frequent inconsistent phoneme-to-grapheme patterns.

Synonyms for grapheme

Antonyms for grapheme

Related Words

Word Forms

• graphemes

Usage Notes

Choose a synonym only when it preserves the intended meaning, tone, and grammar of the full sentence.

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