homophone

English

Etymology

From French homophone; equivalent to homo- (“same”) +‎ -phone (“sound”).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈhɒməfəʊn/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈhɑməfoʊn/

  • Audio (US):

    (file)

• (General Australian) IPA^(key): /ˈhɔməfəʉn/
• (Indic) IPA^(key): /ˈhoːmoːˌfoːn/
• (Canada) IPA^(key): [ˈhɒ(ː)məfoːn]

Noun

Examples (English words)
carat and caret carrot and karat rain, reign and rein road and rode dye and die right, rite, wright and write

homophone (plural homophones)

1. (semantics) A word which is pronounced the same as another word but differs in spelling or meaning or origin.

   Hypernyms: homonym (broad sense); soundalike

   Coordinate terms: homograph (can be coinstantial); oronym, holorhyme (soundalike phrases)

2. A letter or group of letters which are pronounced the same as another letter or group of letters.

Usage notes

A homophone is a type of homonym in the loose sense of that term (a word which sounds or is spelled the same as another). (The strict sense of homonym is a word that both sounds and is spelled the same as another word.) A homograph is a word with the same spelling as another but a completely unrelated meaning. Homographs are not necessarily homophones. See homonym § Usage notes for examples.

Derived terms

• homophonic
• number homophone
• pseudohomophone

Related terms

• homophonous (adjective)
• homophony
• near-homophone

Translations

words with the same pronunciation

• Afrikaans: homofoon (af)
• Arabic: لَفْظَة مُتَجَانِسَة f (lafẓa mutajānisa)
• Armenian: նույնահնչյուն բառ (nuynahnčʻyun baṙ)
• Catalan: homòfon (ca)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 同音詞 / 同音词 (zh) (tóngyīncí), (of Chinese characters) 同音字 (zh) (tóngyīnzì)

• Corsican: please add this translation if you can
• Czech: homofon (cs) m, homofonum n
• Danish: homofon (da) c
• Dutch: homofoon (nl) m
• Esperanto: homofono
• Estonian: homofoon
• Finnish: homofoni (fi)
• French: homophone (fr) m
• Friulian: omofon m
• Georgian: ომოფონი (omoponi)
• German: Homophon (de) n
• Greek: ομόφωνος (el) m (omófonos)
• Hungarian: homofon (not infrequently spelled homofón), azonos kiejtésű, de eltérő jelentésű (és gyakran eltérő alakú) szó
• Icelandic: samhljóma orð n pl
• Ido: homofono (io)
• Indonesian: homofon (id)
• Irish: homafón m, téarma comhfhuaimneach m
• Italian: omofono m
• Japanese: 同音語 (ja) (どうおんご, dōongo)
• Kazakh: омофон (omofon)
• Khmer: សូរដូច (km) (soo dooc), កល្បសព្ទ (kɑlpa’sap)
• Korean: 동음이의어 (ko) (dong'eumiuieo)
• Kurdish:

  Northern Kurdish: hevdeng (ku), homofon (ku)

• Latvian: please add this translation if you can
• Lithuanian: homofonas m
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: homofon (no) m

  Nynorsk: homofon m

• Portuguese: homófono (pt) m
• Romanian: omofon (ro) n
• Russian: омофо́н (ru) m (omofón)
• Serbo-Croatian: homofon (sh) m, istozvučnica (sh) f
• Slovene: enakoglasnica f, homofon m
• Spanish: homófono (es) m, homófona f
• Swedish: homofon (sv) c (1)
• Thai: คำพ้องเสียง (th) (kam-pɔ́ɔng-sǐiang)
• Turkish: sesteş kelime (1), sesteş (tr)
• Vietnamese: từ đồng âm
• Welsh: cyfunsain m, homoffon m

See also

• Appendix:English dialect-independent homophones

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

Further reading

• homophone on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

French

Etymology

Borrowed from Ancient Greek ὁμόφωνος (homóphōnos, “speaking the same language, making the same sound, in agreement, in unison”), from ὁμός (homós, “same”) +‎ -φωνος (-phōnos, “with respect to language or sound”), a suffix derived from φωνή (phōnḗ, “sound, language”), in the linguistic sense coined by French philologist Jean-François Champollion 1822 (for the adjective) and 1824 (for the noun).

Pronunciation

• ^{(mute h)} IPA^(key): /ɔ.mɔ.fɔn/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɔn
• Homophone: homophones

Adjective

homophone (plural homophones)

1. homophonous

Noun

homophone m (plural homophones)

1. (semantics) homophone

See also

• Homophone on the French Wikipedia.Wikipedia ^fr

Further reading

• “homophone”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.