phonetically

adverb

pho·net·ic·al·ly fə-ˈne-ti-k(ə-)lē

: in a phonetic manner or sense or from a phonetic point of view

words that are phonetically similar

especially : by using a system of written symbols that closely represent speech sounds

Wine Enthusiast breaks down the toughest wine tongue twisters and spells them out for you phonetically, so you'll never be speechless around a sommelier again. —

Wine Enthusiast Magazine

At the same time, the Communists abandoned the Wade-Giles system of phonetically rendering the sound of Mandarin using the Roman alphabet and adopted instead the pinyin system. —

Jasper Becker

Examples of phonetically in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web Baer’s jersey spells Santander’s name phonetically: Sahn-tahn-dare. —

Jacob Calvin Meyer, Baltimore Sun, 10 Aug. 2024 Several towns in the county are phonetically tied to Patwin villages — Suisun, Soscol, Ulatis and Putah — according to the county’s official homepage. —

Tyrone Beason, Los Angeles Times, 23 July 2024 For guest judges Carla Hall (a Top Chef season eight alumna and constant presence on the Food Network) and actress Clea DuVall — two names that are very phonetically pleasant together — the chefs have to cook a dish featuring both cherries and a surprise ingredient hidden behind a little door. —

Roxana Hadadi, Vulture, 3 Apr. 2024 Messages come in a rush of many voices, languages mixed seamlessly, Arabic spelled out phonetically. —

Jordan P. Hickey, Longreads, 22 Feb. 2024 In truth, Sabu, whose mother tongue was Kannada, was reciting his lines phonetically. —

Hazlitt, 29 Nov. 2023 The actor realized Myers was actually speaking Japanese, having phonetically memorized his lines so as to seem fluent. —

Lester Fabian Brathwaite, EW.com, 28 June 2023 On that visit and a subsequent session at the school with her daughter, Isaac’s mother, and Isaac’s teacher, Ms. Joseph found that her grandson was being given difficult reading assignments without being taught to parse the words by sounding them out phonetically. —

Sam Roberts, New York Times, 8 Apr. 2022 Selena learned Spanish phonetically to sing Tejano music. —

New York Times, 4 Dec. 2020

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'phonetically.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.