Word.ws English Dictionary

near-minimal pair

near-minimal pair noun: a pair of words differing by a few (but more than one) phonetic segments or suprasegments, used to suggest a proposed phoneme, toneme, or chroneme may be valid.

Noun

near-minimal pair (plural near-minimal pairs)

  1. A pair of words differing by a few (but more than one) phonetic segments or suprasegments, used to suggest a proposed phoneme, toneme, or chroneme may be valid.

Forms of near-minimal pair

pluralnear-minimal pairs
alternative formnear minimal pair

Questions about near-minimal pair

What does near-minimal pair mean?
Near-minimal pair means a pair of words differing by a few (but more than one) phonetic segments or suprasegments, used to suggest a proposed phoneme, toneme, or chroneme may be valid.
What part of speech is near-minimal pair?
Near-minimal pair is a noun.
What is the plural of near-minimal pair?
The plural of near-minimal pair is near-minimal pairs.

Words near near-minimal pair in the dictionary

  1. near-fall
  2. near-falls
  3. near-field
  4. near-fields
  5. near-hand
  6. near-minimal pair
  7. near-minimal pairs
  8. near-mint
  9. near-native
  10. near-natives
  11. near-rectilinear halo orbit

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: near-minimal pair (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.

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