In linguistics, a chroneme is a basic, theoretical unit of sound that can distinguish words by duration only of a vowel or consonant. The noun chroneme is derived from Greek χρόνος (chrónos, time), and the suffixed -eme, which is analogous to the -eme in phoneme or morpheme. However, thr term does not have wide currency and may be unknown even to phonologists who work on languages claimed to have chronemes.