The term phonestheme (or phonaestheme in British English) was coined in 1930 by British linguist J. R. Firth (from the Greek phone, "sound", and aisthanomai, "perceive") to label the systematic pairing of form and meaning in a language. A phonestheme's different from a morpheme because it doesn't meet the normal criterion of compositionality. Within Peirce's "theory of signs" the phonestheme's considered to be an "icon" rather than a "symbol" or an "index". Identification of a phonestheme Phones… (More on Phonestheme)