heteronym

English

WOTD – 21 November 2008

Etymology

Coined around 1900, either from hetero- (“different”) +‎ -onym (“name”) or from Ancient Greek ἑτερώνυμος (heterṓnumos), or perhaps both.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈhɛt.əɹ.ə(ʊ).nɪm/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈhɛt.ə.ɹoʊ.nɪm/, /ˈhɛt.ə.ɹə.nɪm/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

Noun

heteronym (plural heteronyms)

1. (linguistics) A word having the same spelling as another, but a different pronunciation and meaning.

   Agape, "astonished" or "wide open," is a heteronym of agape, "Christian love."

2. (literature) A fictitious character created by an author for the purpose of writing in a different style.

Synonyms

• (linguistics): heterophone, homograph

Translations

word having the same spelling but different pronunciation

• Catalan: heterònim (ca)
• Finnish: heteronyymi
• French: hétéronyme (fr) m
• German: Heteronym (de) n
• Greek: ετερώνυμο (el) n (eterónymo)
• Hungarian: heteronima, azonos alakú, (de) eltérő kiejtésű és jelentésű szó
• Khmer: វិកល្បពាក្យ (vi’kɑlpa’ piek)
• Portuguese: heterónimo (pt) m (Portugal), heterônimo (pt) m (Brazil)
• Russian: омо́граф (ru) m (omógraf), гетеро́ним m (getɛrónim)
• Serbo-Croatian:

  Cyrillic: хетероним m

  Roman: heteronim (sh) m

• Spanish: heterónimo (es) m
• Thai: คำพ้องรูป (th) (kam-pɔ́ɔng-rûup)
• Turkish: eşadlı (tr)

fictitious character writing in a different style

• Finnish: heteronyymi
• French: hétéronyme (fr) m
• Polish: heteronim m
• Portuguese: heterónimo (pt) m (Portugal), heterônimo (pt) m (Brazil)
• Russian: гетеро́ним m (getɛrónim)
• Serbo-Croatian:

  Cyrillic: хетероним m

  Roman: heteronim (sh) m

• Spanish: heterónimo (es) m

See also

• Category:English heteronyms
• polyphone (a letter [or combination of letters] that can be pronounced in two or more different ways, such as 長／长 in Chinese, pronounced [cháng] in the sense of ’long’ and [zhǎng] in the sense of ’to grow’)

Euler diagram of choice semantic relations.

Nyms (with category [cat] if any)

Noun (cat)	Sound	Spelling	Meaning	phone/graph
identical	same	same	same	homophone & homograph
homophone (cat)	same	different	different	homophone & heterograph
alternative spelling	same	different	same	homophone & heterograph
homonym	same	same	different	homophone & homograph
synonym	different	different	same	heterophone & heterograph
heteronym (cat)	different	same	different	heterophone & homograph
alternative pronunciation	different	same	same	heterophone & homograph
distinct	different	different	different	heterophone & heterograph