Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun One of two or more words, such as night and knight, that are pronounced the same but differ in meaning, origin, and sometimes spelling.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A letter or character expressing a like sound with another.
- noun A word having the same sound as another, but differing in meaning and usually in derivation, and often in spelling; a homonym.
- noun Same as
homophony .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A letter or character which expresses a like sound with another.
- noun A word having the same sound as another, but differing from it in meaning and usually in spelling
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A letter or group of letters which are pronounced the same as another letter or group of letters.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun two words are homophones if they are pronounced the same way but differ in meaning or spelling or both (e.g. bare and bear)
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Homo means same and phone means sound, so the word homophone literally means same sound.
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Writing the wrong homophone is easy, and typing the wrong one incredibly easy – and for a lot of reasons, they’re easy to make and hard to spot.
Book Review: Things That Make Us [Sic] makes me slightly ill « Motivated Grammar 2009
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I thought the homophone was the pink phone on Commissioner Gordon's desk that he used when he wanted to go on the down low with Titus?
"Although I thought Ann's Rush apologism was unseemly and unfounded, I have to say I basically agree with Jon Chait..." Ann Althouse 2009
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It's the use of homophone, which is a word with the same sound but that's spelled differently with a different meaning.
Matthew Good, Blowhard ALW 2006
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Interestingly, in appears that in the scientific literature "homophone" and "homograph" mean the same thing, which explains why there are so many papers about mispronouncing homophones.
Archive 2009-10-01 josh 2009
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Interestingly, in appears that in the scientific literature "homophone" and "homograph" mean the same thing, which explains why there are so many papers about mispronouncing homophones.
Why do so many homophones have two pronunciations? josh 2009
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There is actually quite a bit of reason to think that the 2nd singular 'homophone' wasn't even a homophone, after all they didn't match in rhyme class.
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At some point things become suspected if not known, and I should not like to be grain of salt that tips the scales, nor the cause of said homophone falling from your wife's trusting eyes.
Lisa Derrick: Note to a Married Man Lisa Derrick 2010
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• Near homophone corner: "If you want to revel in the dappled shade of the most beautiful canapé of plane trees in Europe, go now."
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The almost-too-cute homophone in the subtitle — halving your cake — is the sort of device that can bode ominously.
sonofgroucho commented on the word homophone
Here's a list of English Homophones.
February 14, 2008