Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
What are homonyms, homophones, and homographs? Homonym can be troublesome because it may refer to three distinct classes of words. Homonyms may be words with identical pronunciations but different spellings and meanings, such as to, too, and two.
Homonyms are words with the same pronunciation or the same spelling. For example: Same pronunciation: "maid" and "made". Same spelling: "lead" (as in a lead weight) and "lead" (as in to lead a team) When homonyms have the same sound, they are called "homophones."
The definition of a homonym is “one of two or more words spelled and pronounced alike but different in meaning.” Just to confuse things a little more, homonyms can be broken down into two categories: homophones and homographs. The name comes from the Greek homōnymon (the neuter of homōnymos), which means “having the same name.”
Homonyms are words that are spelled the same and sound the same but have different meanings. The word homonym comes from the prefix homo- which means "the same," and the suffix -nym, which means "name."
Homophones are pairs or sets of words that sound the same but have different meanings. They may or may not have the same spelling. However, when a set of homophones does share the same spelling, they can also be considered homonyms. Take, for example, see and sea.
A homonym is a word that has a different meaning than another word but is pronounced the same or spelled the same or both. The word homonym can be used as a synonym for both homophone and homograph. It can also be used to refer to words that are both homophones and homographs.
A homonym is a word that is said or spelled the same way as another word but has a different meaning. "Write” and “right” is a good example of a pair of homonyms. Homonym traces back to the Greek words homos, meaning “same,” and onuma, meaning “name.”