phonic
/ˈfɑn.ɪk/adjective
phonic is an adjective meaning “Of or pertaining to sound; of the nature of sound; acoustic” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled P-H-O-N-I-C and has 2 syllables, and it appears about once in every 11 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does phonic mean?
adjective
- 1
Of or pertaining to sound; of the nature of sound; acoustic.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce phonic?
- US /ˈfɑn.ɪk/
- US /ˈfoʊ.nɪk/
- UK /ˈfɒn.ɪk/
Phonic has 2 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-phonic.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
How common is phonic?
Phonic appears about once in every 11 million words in written English, the 98,107th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Phonic in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense phonic:
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does phonic come from?
From Ancient Greek φωνή (phōnḗ, “sound”) + -ic.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).