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If pronunciation pairs with sound, which word should spelling pair with?

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Somehow I feel reminded of “Visualized” equivalent adjective for audio, except it's the other way round this time... – RegDwighт♦ Oct 8 '10 at 20:07

3 Answers

up vote 3 down vote accepted

There a couple of implied analogies here:

A word’s pronunciation is how it sounds, so a word’s spelling is how it ___.

  • looks
  • appears

A word’s pronunciation is what sound it makes when used, so a word’s spelling is what ___ it makes when used.

  • shape
  • appearance
  • visual manifestation
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+1, I think that "look" is actually the best candidate, because just as "sound", it works both as a verb and as a noun (as opposed to the other candidates on your list and elsewhere on this page). – RegDwighт♦ Oct 8 '10 at 21:41
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Actually, the word that the OP is looking for might be orthography. – JSBձոգչ Dec 3 '10 at 0:27
up vote 1 down vote

In my mind, appearance.

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up vote 0 down vote

I said "sight" earlier but that's not right. (In that case you'd have said "hearing" not "sound"). Maybe "vision"?

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