<p><strong>Adjective</strong></p><ul><li>of or relating to speech sounds, their production, or their transcription in written symbols.</li><li>corresponding to pronunciation: phonetic transcription.</li><li>agreeing with pronunciation: phonetic spelling.</li><li>concerning or involving the discrimination of nondistinctive elements of a language.</li><li>In English, certain phonological features, as length and aspiration, are phonetic but not phonemic.</li></ul><p><strong>Noun</strong></p><ul><li>(in Chinese writing) a written element that represents a sound and is used in combination with a radical to form a character.</li></ul>