1.AdjectiveRelating to the sounds of spoken language.
2.AdjectiveRelating to phones (as opposed to phonemes).
3.AdjectiveRelating to the spoken rather than written form of a word or name, as opposed to orthographic.
"All unfamiliar names have been transcribed in phonetic spelling."
4.NounIn such writing systems as the Chinese writing system, the portion of a phono-semantic character that provides an indication of its pronunciation; contrasted with semantic (which is usually the radical).