phonetic: Meaning and Definition of

pho•net•ic

1. of or pertaining to speech sounds, their production, or their transcription in written symbols.
2. corresponding to pronunciation: phonetic transcription.
3. agreeing with pronunciation: phonetic spelling.
4. concerning or involving the discrimination of nondistinctive elements of a language. In English, certain phonological features, as length and aspiration, are phonetic but not phonemic.

1. (in Chinese writing) a written element that represents a sound and is used in combination with a radical to form a character.