Definitions

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

  • noun A paronymous word.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A word which is a derivative from another.
  • noun A word of one language which translates a word of another with only a difference of termination or other slight change, as English canal for the Latin canalis: opposed to heteronym.

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

  • noun A paronymous word.

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

  • noun semantics A word derived from the same root, or with the same sound, as another word.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Greek parōnumon, from neuter sing. of parōnumos, derivative; see paronymous.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Ancient Greek παρα ‘beside’ + ονομα-onym’.

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Examples

  • My listings like "looking to get tarred and pleasured" and "Searching for a heroine to do the paronym of this sentence's lexical subject" kept getting flagged.

    Gawker 2009

  • My listings like "looking to get tarred and pleasured" and "Searching for a heroine to do the paronym of this sentence's lexical subject" kept getting flagged.

    Gawker 2009

Comments

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  • paronym – a word that is related to another word and derives from the same root; a cognate word

    July 19, 2008