Word.ws English Dictionary

minimal pair

minimal pair noun: a pair of words differing by only one phonetic segment or suprasegment, used to prove the validity of a proposed phoneme, toneme, or chroneme.

Noun

minimal pair (plural minimal pairs)

  1. A pair of words differing by only one phonetic segment or suprasegment, used to prove the validity of a proposed phoneme, toneme, or chroneme.

minimal pair meaning in Tamil, Tagalog and Thai

minimal pair in Tamil

குறைஒலி இணை

minimal pair in Tagalog

pair of words differing by only one phonetic segment or suprasegment
pares minimal

minimal pair in Thai

pair of words differing by only one phonetic segment or suprasegment
คู่เทียบเสียง

Forms of minimal pair

pluralminimal pairs

Questions about minimal pair

What does minimal pair mean?
Minimal pair means a pair of words differing by only one phonetic segment or suprasegment, used to prove the validity of a proposed phoneme, toneme, or chroneme.
What is minimal pair in Tamil?
Minimal pair in Tamil is குறைஒலி இணை. See Minimal pair meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is minimal pair?
Minimal pair is a noun.
What is the plural of minimal pair?
The plural of minimal pair is minimal pairs.

Words near minimal pair in the dictionary

  1. minimal change disease
  2. minimal ideal
  3. minimal ideals
  4. minimal media
  5. minimal medium
  6. minimal pair
  7. minimal pairs
  8. minimal polynomial
  9. minimal polynomials
  10. minimal prime
  11. minimal primes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: minimal pair (page history and authors); minimal pair (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-minimal pair.wav.

Cite this entry: “minimal pair.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/minimal_pair. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.