minimal pair

in linguistics, two forms that differ in just one phonological feature, thereby illustrating the critical contrastive role played by that feature. In English, for example, the spoken forms [pin] and [bin] are a minimal pair that serve to identify /p/ and /b/ as distinct phonemes. See binary feature; emic–etic distinction.

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Psychology term of the day

January 31st 2025

maleness

n. the quality of being male in the anatomical and physiological sense by virtue of possessing the XY combination of sex chromosomes. Compare masculinity.