Homonym

Homonyms (in Greek homoios = identical and onoma = name) are words that have the same phonetic form (homophones) or orthographic form (homographs) but unrelated meaning. In derivation, homonym means the same name, homophone means the same sound, and homograph means the same letters.

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An example of a homonym which is both a homophone and a homograph is fluke. Fluke is a fish, as well as a flatworm, the end parts of a whale or an anchor, and a stroke of luck, all of which four separate lexemes with separate etymologies, share the one form, fluke. Similarly, a river bank, a savings bank, and a bank of switches share only a common spelling and pronunciation, but not meaning.

Related Topics:
Flatworm - Whale - Anchor - Luck - Lexeme - Etymologies

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The first homonyms that one learns in English are probably the homophones to, too, and two, but the sentence "Too much to do in two days" would confuse no one. (Note, however, when read with a natural rhythm in many dialects, to has a schwa and is not homophonous with too or two.) There, their, and they're are familar examples, as are lead (the metal) and led (the verb past participle). Moped (the motorized bicycle) and moped (the past tense of mope) are examples of homographs; they are not homophones, because they are pronounced differently. The National Puzzlers' League calls homographs heteronyms.

Related Topics:
Schwa - Past participle - National Puzzlers' League - Heteronym

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In some accents, various sounds have merged in that they are no longer distinctive, and thus words that differ only by those sounds in an accent that maintains the distinction (a minimal pair) are homophonous in the accent with the merger. Some examples are pin and pen in many southern American accents, and merry, marry, and Mary in many western American accents. The pairs do, due and forward, foreword are homophonous in most American accents but not in most British accents. Similarly, talk and torque are distinguished in most dialects of American English, but are homophones in British English.

Related Topics:
Merged - Minimal pair - Southern American accents

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Homograph disambiguation is critically important in speech synthesis, natural language processing and other fields. See also polysemy for a closely related idea.

Related Topics:
Speech synthesis - Natural language processing - Polysemy

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Many puns rely on homographs for their humor.

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