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Abstract: The paper deals with syntactic means of formation of phonetic terms in the French and Russian languages. Syntactic means are treated as a way of term formation by combining words of different types. The necessity to study the problem of the structure of terminological units is closely connected with the problem of the optimal term length which in its turn is related to the terms’ content structure. In spite of a large amount of literature on the problem under study, not all issues have been resolved to the fullest degree as not all modern ways of term formation have been considered sufficiently enough. One more reason which makes it necessary to study the structure of terminological units is that the use of only lexicological and wordformation analysis methods does not let give exhaustive recommendation on how to reach the optimal term structure and length. Syntactic means of formation of phonetic terms is the most productive way in the terminology under study. On the basis of the language data (726 compound terms in the French language and 756 in the Russian language) the author argues that about 70% of the phonetic terms verbalizing the main phonetic notion ‘speech sound’ are formed by means of the syntactic method. The structural models of the terms-word combinations are singled out in the French and Russian languages. The author states that there prevail two-component word combinations in the terminology under study, which, in the author’s opinion, doesn’t contradict the requirement of the terminological units for conciseness but adds to the precision, adequacy and fullness of expression of characteristics of the basic phonetic terms. It is noted that this way of term formation is typical in the framework of such groups as “Sound”, “Consonants”, “Sound Changes”, “Speech Apparatus Construction” and “Articulation” in the compared languages.