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Dictionary

Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

grapheme en · NOUN

Pronunciation

  • /ˈɡɹæ.fim/ (General-American)
  • (Southern-England) audio
  • /ˈɡɹæ.fiːm/ (Received-Pronunciation)

Etymology

From Ancient Greek γράφω (gráphō, “write”) + -eme. Doublet of -gram.

Meanings

  1. A fundamental unit of a writing system, corresponding to (for example) letters in the English alphabet or jamo in Korean hangul.
    • For instance, it is convenient to refer to a single Chinese character as being a grapheme in some contexts. 2000, Richard Sproat, A Computational Theory of Writing Systems, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 28:
  2. (qualifier:Unicode) A sequence of one or more code points that are processed and displayed as a single graphical unit of a writing system.
    • 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 […] 2003, Richard Gillam, chapter 4, in Unicode Demystified: A Practical Programmer's Guide to the Encoding Standard, Addison-Wesley Professional, →ISBN, page 118:
  3. In alphabetic writing, the shortest group of letters composing a phoneme.
    • 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. [1987, David Caplan, Neurolinguistics and Linguistic Aphasiology: An Introduction, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 234:
    • In terms of specific graphemes, Table 2.5 identifies the most frequent inconsistent phoneme-to-grapheme patterns. 2019, Flavia Belpoliti, Encarna Bermejo, Spanish Heritage Learners' Emerging Literacy: Empirical Research and Classroom Practice, Routledge, →ISBN:

Forms

SpellingFeaturesLabelsSource
graphemes Number=Plur lexicographic

Coordinates

glyph · character

Deriveds

graphemics · grapheme-to-phoneme · grapholect · graphemic · grapheme-color · grapheme-phoneme correspondence · graphematic · archigrapheme

Synonyms

grapheme cluster

Translations (44)

fi grafeemi (fundamental unit of a writing system) · ca grafema (fundamental unit of a writing system) · es grafema (fundamental unit of a writing system) · eo grafemo (fundamental unit of a writing system) · de Graphem (fundamental unit of a writing system) · ko 자소 (fundamental unit of a writing system) · it grafema (fundamental unit of a writing system) · ja 文字素 (fundamental unit of a writing system) · ban aksarabaga (fundamental unit of a writing system) · bg графе́ма (fundamental unit of a writing system) · ro grafem (fundamental unit of a writing system) · mi orotuhi (fundamental unit of a writing system) · hy գրույթ (fundamental unit of a writing system) · ko 문자소 (fundamental unit of a writing system) · el γράφημα (fundamental unit of a writing system) · be графе́ма (fundamental unit of a writing system) · pl grafem (fundamental unit of a writing system) · scn grafima (fundamental unit of a writing system) · ja 書記素 (fundamental unit of a writing system) · he גְּרָפֶמָה (fundamental unit of a writing system) · cmn 字素 (fundamental unit of a writing system) · sh gràfēm (fundamental unit of a writing system) · th หน่วยอักขระ (fundamental unit of a writing system) · pt grafema (fundamental unit of a writing system) · ko 서기소 (fundamental unit of a writing system) · ast grafema (fundamental unit of a writing system) · ka გრაფემა (fundamental unit of a writing system) · uk графе́ма (fundamental unit of a writing system) · vi tự vị (fundamental unit of a writing system) · ru графе́ма (fundamental unit of a writing system) · ja 字素 (fundamental unit of a writing system) · hu graféma (fundamental unit of a writing system) · nl grafeem (fundamental unit of a writing system) · ms grafem (fundamental unit of a writing system) · sk graféma (fundamental unit of a writing system) · gl grafema (fundamental unit of a writing system) · fr graphème (fundamental unit of a writing system) · cs grafém (fundamental unit of a writing system) · cmn 字位 (fundamental unit of a writing system) · ja 図形素 (fundamental unit of a writing system) · sv grafem (fundamental unit of a writing system) · sh гра̀фе̄м (fundamental unit of a writing system) · mk графема (fundamental unit of a writing system) · kk графема (fundamental unit of a writing system)