diaphone
/ˈdaɪəfoʊn/
noun
- A type of foghorn or sound signal that produces a low, powerful tone, used as a warning to ships.
- The diaphone on the lighthouse sounded every thirty seconds in the thick fog.
- Sailors rely on the diaphone's deep blast to navigate safely near rocky coasts.
- The old diaphone at the harbor was replaced with a modern electronic horn.
- In linguistics, a sound that is considered the same phoneme across different dialects or languages, though pronounced differently.
- Linguists study diaphones to understand how pronunciation varies regionally.
- The vowel in 'cot' and 'caught' is a diaphone in some American dialects.
- The 'r' sound is a diaphone between British and American English.
Synonyms