What is "phonestheme"

alt. (context linguistics English) A sound that, because it appears in a number of words of similar meaning, has a recognizable semantic association. n. (context linguistics English) A sound that, because it appears in a number of words of similar meaning, has a recognizable semantic association.

The term phonestheme (or phonaestheme in British English) was coined in 1930 by British linguist J. R. Firth (from the Greek φωνή phone, "sound", and αἴσθημα aisthema, "perception" from αίσθάνομαι aisthanomai, "I perceive") to label the systematic pairing of form and meaning in a language. Such pairing would violate the arbitrariness principle of semantics.

A phonestheme is different from a morpheme because it does not meet the normal criterion of compositionality.

Within Peirce's "theory of signs" the phonestheme is considered to be an " icon" rather than a " symbol" or an " index".