Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The quality or condition of being homonymous.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Sameness of name with a difference of meaning; ambiguity; equivocation; specifically, in philology, the character of homonyms.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Sameness of name or designation; identity in relations.
  • noun Sameness of name or designation of things or persons which are different; ambiguity.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun semantics The property of being a homonym.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the relation between two words that are spelled the same way but differ in meaning or the relation between two words that are pronounced the same way but differ in meaning

Etymologies

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Examples

  • The traditional translations of equivocal, univocal and derivative are sometimes brought into English as homonymy, synonymy and paronymy.

    Notes on Aristotle's Categories 2005

  • The traditional translations of equivocal, univocal and derivative are sometimes brought into English as homonymy, synonymy and paronymy.

    April 2005 2005

  • French homonymy also gives you "rime riche" which is now illegal.

    languagehat.com: PATAPOUFS! ANTHROPOPHAGES! 2004

  • I can attest that Cao Cao traditional transliteration Tsao Tsao is an extremely famous figure in Chinese history, and it's absurd that his name is censored because of homonymy!

    languagehat.com: CENSORSHIP IN CHINESE MSN SPACES. 2004

  • The choir/quire homonymy doesn't seem as active there as it is in Shakespeare, though.

    languagehat.com: CHOIRS/QUIRES. 2004

  • Here we have a confusion of two essentially different things through the homonymy in the word honour, and a consequent alteration of the point in dispute.

    The Art of Controversy 2004

  • And yet, though indeed there be little relation between our real self and the other — because of their homonymy and their common body, the abnegation which makes us sacrifice easier duties, pleasures even, seems to others egoism.

    Time Regained 2003

  • The fact that an object can have many names (polynomy) and, con - versely, that the same name can be applied to several objects (homonymy) produced a confusion of names.

    Dictionary of the History of Ideas MIRCEA ELIADE 1968

  • Criticismo occurs in Spanish, in Baltasar Gracián's El Heroe (1637), and sporadically in eighteenth-century Italian, but disappeared as there was no problem of homonymy.

    LITERARY CRITICISM REN 1968

  • And this I shall do that we be not deceived with the homonymy of the word, nor be at a loss in the intention of those places of

    Pneumatologia 1616-1683 1967

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