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A homonym which is both a homophone and a homograph is fluke, meaning: A fish, and a flatworm. The end parts of an anchor. The fins on a whale's tail. A stroke of luck. These meanings represent at least three etymologically separate lexemes, but share the one form, fluke. [13]
Most of the pairs listed below are closely related: for example, "absent" as a noun meaning "missing", and as a verb meaning "to make oneself missing". There are also many cases in which homographs are of an entirely separate origin, or whose meanings have diverged to the point that present-day speakers have little historical understanding: for ...
If, when spoken, the meanings may be distinguished by different pronunciations, the words are also heteronyms. Words with the same writing and pronunciation (i.e. are both homographs and homophones) are considered homonyms. However, in a broader sense the term "homonym" may be applied to words with the same writing or pronunciation.
The sentence employs three distinct meanings of the word buffalo: As an attributive noun (acting as an adjective) to refer to a specific place named Buffalo, such as the city of Buffalo, New York; As the verb to buffalo, meaning (in American English [1] [2]) "to bully, harass, or intimidate" or "to baffle"; and
Some are homonyms, such as basta, which can either mean 'enough' or 'coarse', and some exist because of homophonous letters. For example, the letters b and v are pronounced exactly alike, so the words basta (coarse) and vasta (vast) are pronounced identically. [17] Other homonyms are spelled the same, but mean different things in different genders.
Polysemy (/ p ə ˈ l ɪ s ɪ m i / or / ˈ p ɒ l ɪ ˌ s iː m i /; [1] [2] from Ancient Greek πολύ-(polý-) 'many' and σῆμα (sêma) 'sign') is the capacity for a sign (e.g. a symbol, a morpheme, a word, or a phrase) to have multiple related meanings.
A heteronym (also known as a heterophone) is a word that has a different pronunciation and meaning from another word but the same spelling. These are homographs that are not homophones. Thus, lead (/ˈlɛd/ the metal) and lead (/ˈliːd/ a leash) are heteronyms, but mean (/ˈmin/ average) and mean (/ˈmin/ intend) are not, since they are ...
homonym: 1: a: a word pronounced like another, but differing in meaning or derivation or spelling—also known as a homophone (e.g. to, too, two). b: a word spelled like another, but differing in derivation or meaning or pronunciation—also known as a homograph or heteronym (lead, to conduct, and lead, the metal).