How to Use phonetic in a Sentence

phonetic

adjective
  • Spanish is a more phonetic language than English.
  • This dictionary uses the International Phonetic Alphabet.
  • Apple has blamed the bug on the phonetic overlap between the two words.
    — Jibin Joseph, PCMAG, 26 Feb. 2025
  • In phonetic Lebanese Arabic, the name for the recipe is murabba el meshmosh.
    — Bill Addison, Los Angeles Times, 28 June 2023
  • The app also does a great job of recognizing phonetic misspelling, like blk for black or lfnt for elephant.
    — Suzie Glassman, Wired, 16 Oct. 2021
  • The deaf person would learn to associate each letter of the alphabet with a phonetic sound.
    — National Geographic, 28 May 2019
  • If the spelling still comes out wrong, try adjusting the phonetic spelling until the system gets it right.
    — Ken Colburn, AZCentral.com, 18 Aug. 2025
  • There was no doubt, the board said, that the target market would read it as the phonetic and literal equivalent of the f-word.
    — Derek Hawkins, Washington Post, 18 Dec. 2017
  • Before the graduates had filed into the arena, they were given the card on which Schoon had made his phonetic notes.
    — Erika Rose, Post-Tribune, 2 May 2018
  • His most important conclusion was that some hieroglyphs appeared to give phonetic cues, signs of a word’s sound.
    — The New Yorker, 22 Nov. 2021
  • Their phonetic systems were housed in vertical tubes that supplied warm, moist air similar to the air that enters the body when breathing.
    — Jorge Garay, WIRED, 31 Oct. 2023
  • No foreign or slang words or terms, or phonetic spellings or mirror images of words or terms that fall into any of the previous categories.
    — Nathaniel Levine, Sacbee.com, 14 Nov. 2025
  • This includes preferred pronouns and phonetic pronunciations of names to avoid any mix-ups.
    — Shelby Wax, Vogue, 3 Jan. 2024
  • Seeing people speak is a building block of phonetic development.
    — Marty Makary and H. Cody Meissner, WSJ, 8 Aug. 2021
  • An Apple spokeswoman blamed the issue on phonetic overlap between the two words, and said the company was working on a fix.
    — Tripp Mickle, New York Times, 25 Feb. 2025
  • Kids need to read texts that include only those phonetic patterns that have been explicitly taught, among other requirements.
    — cleveland, 21 Dec. 2022
  • Much like Rude, Aoki listened to elders speak and transcribed their words into phonetic symbols.
    — Wil Phinney, oregonlive, 12 Nov. 2022
  • Many people on social media speculated that the woman was reading the phonetic spellings of the names and didn't have the full names written out in their normal spellings.
    — Caitlin O'Kane, CBS News, 10 May 2024
  • Relating the sounds in this name to variables in the final strings, Hyland proposed a phonetic decipherment of it.
    — Bridget Alex, Discover Magazine, 4 Jan. 2019
  • No matter — even in purely phonetic form, his remarkable voice functioned as another instrument, cutting through the din of the guitars.
    — Keith Spera, NOLA.com, 30 Oct. 2020
  • This is due to the Chinese phonetic pronunciation of the number being similar to the word for death and suffering.
    — Michael Simon, PCWorld, 15 June 2017
  • Farley also takes a moment to show that De Laurentiis’ menu includes phonetic spellings of all the items — even ravioli.
    — Erin Clements, PEOPLE, 9 Oct. 2025
  • Williams specifically talked highly of Seikovits, or Psycho as some may call him because of the phonetic sounding reference.
    — Kamryn Walker, The Arizona Republic, 3 Aug. 2021
  • Most of the amendments appear to correct typographical errors and phonetic misspellings in the initial transcript.
    — Jeff McDonald, San Diego Union-Tribune, 10 Apr. 2022
  • Also, the spelling is entirely phonetic, so you’ll never be confused by silent letters or letters that make different sounds in different contexts.
    — Joshua Holzer, Smithsonian Magazine, 26 July 2022
  • In addition, the marks are essentially phonetic equivalents and, thus, sound similar.
    — Los Angeles Times, 17 Apr. 2026
  • Edwards spent weeks consulting with Swahili-proficient colleagues and putting Pepper through many trials with phonetic spelling.
    — Kate Keller, Smithsonian, 27 Apr. 2018
  • Wallace has a different mouth for each phonetic sound, clay desks are artificially rusted and 60 versions of the gnome robot alone were created.
    — Caroline Reid, Forbes, 5 Jan. 2025
  • As such, the team settled on phonetic parameters that commonly apply to Nigerian English as part of guidelines for the project.
    — Yomi Kazeem, Quartz Africa, 31 July 2019
  • The difference is that while infants pick up an incredible library of phonetic sounds between 14 and 20 months, dogs never progress any further.
    — Theresa MacHemer, Smithsonian Magazine, 11 Dec. 2020

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'phonetic.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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