one of a set of orthographic symbols (letters or combinations of letters) in a given language that serve to distinguish one word from another and usually correspond to or represent phonemes, e.g. the f in fun, the ph in phantom, and the gh in laugh
Derived forms
graphemic (graˈphemic)
adjective
graphemically (graˈphemically)
adverb
Word origin
C20: from Greek graphēma a letter
grapheme in American English
(ˈgræfˌim)
US
noun
Linguistics
a class consisting of all the allographs representing a given unit of a writing system, or all those representing a given phoneme
Derived forms
graphemic (graˈphemic)
adjective
Word origin
graph, a spelling, occurrence of an allograph (< -graph) + -eme