| grapheme |
| Definition: An atomic unit of written language. It denotes the set of letters or visual symbols that represent a phoneme. Note: This is in contrast to a glyph, which is the shape that a particular typeface gives to a particular symbol. Hence one grapheme can be represented by many glyphs. |
| Example: The grapheme <f> consists of a set of letters that includes f, ff, F, Ff, gh, ph, and Ph which represent the phoneme /f/ in the words fine, puffy, Frankfurt, Ffoulkes, rough, graph, and Phineas respectively. |
| Etymology: The word was coined by combining the Greek graphos, writing, with the linguist's favourite suffix eme , as in morpheme and phoneme. |
| Oxford English Dictionary: Its first citation is from 1935: "It would clarify the issue if these units might be called ‘graphemes’." (W. F. Twaddell, Defining Phonemes, 54 ) |