homophone
English
Pronunciation
Noun
Examples (English words) |
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homophone (plural homophones)
- (semantics) A word which is pronounced the same as another word but differs in spelling or meaning or origin.
- A letter or group of letters which are pronounced the same as another letter or group of letters.
Usage notes
A homophone is a type of homonym in the loose sense of that term (a word which sounds or is spelled the same as another). (The strict sense of homonym is a word that both sounds and is spelled the same as another word.) A homograph is a word with the same spelling as another but a completely unrelated meaning. Homographs are not necessarily homophones. See homonym § Usage notes for examples.
Derived terms
Related terms
- homophonous (adjective)
Translations
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See also
- Appendix:English dialect-independent homophones
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Noun (cat) | Sound | Spelling | Meaning | phone/graph |
---|---|---|---|---|
homonym | same | same | different | homophone & homograph |
heteronym (cat) | different | same | different | heterophone & homograph |
homophone | same | different | different | homophone (cat) & heterograph |
alternative pronunciation | different | same | same | heterophone & homograph |
synonym | different | different | same | heterophone & heterograph |
alternative spelling | same | different | same | homophone & heterograph |
identical | same | same | same | homophone & homograph |
distinct | different | different | different | heterophone & heterograph |
French
Etymology
Borrowed from Ancient Greek ὁμόφωνος (homóphōnos, “speaking the same language, making the same sound, in agreement, in unison”), from ὁμός (homós, “same”) + -φωνος (-phōnos, “with respect to language or sound”), a suffix derived from φωνή (phōnḗ, “sound, language”), in the linguistic sense coined by French philologist Jean-François Champollion 1822 (for the adjective) and 1824 (for the noun).
Pronunciation
- (mute h) IPA(key): /ɔ.mɔ.fɔn/
Audio (file) - Rhymes: -ɔn
- Homophone: homophones
See also
Homophone on the French Wikipedia.Wikipedia fr
Further reading
- “homophone”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.