Etymology

emic

e·mic
E1M3I1C3

Today it means: Of or pertaining to the analysis of a cultural system or its features from the perspective of a participant in that culture. Full definition →

English phonemicclip. ← Ancient Greek φώνημα (phṓnēma) ← Proto-Hellenic *pʰōnā́
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The story

  1. Proto-Indo-European*bʰeh₂-
  2. Proto-Hellenic*pʰōnā́
  3. Ancient Greekφωνή (phōnḗ)
  4. Ancient Greekφωνέω (phōnéō)
  5. Ancient Greekφώνημα (phṓnēma)
  6. Englishphoneme
  7. Englishphonemicclip.
  8. English todayemic

Coined by American linguist Kenneth Pike in 1954 from phonemic. * Kenneth Lee Pike (1982), Linguistic Concepts: An Introduction to Tagmemics, page 44: “Generalizing from phonemics, I coined the term emic in 1954.”

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.