| phonetics |
| Definition: The study of human speech sounds. Note: It consists of three branches: (1) acoustic phonetics: the study of the sound waves that vocal organs make; (2) auditory phonetics: the study of how the ear, auditory nerve, and brain perceive speech sounds; and (3) articulatory phonetics: the study of how human vocal organs make speech sounds. |
| Etymology: The word derives from the Greek phonetikos, vocal (from phone, sound or voice). |
| Oxford English Dictionary: The first OED citation for the word in the sense "scientific study of speech" is from 1841: Phonetics … determines (amongst other things) the systematic relation of Articulate Sounds …. (Latham Eng. Lang. ii. ii. 113) |