homophone

English

Etymology

From French homophone.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈhɒməfəʊ̯n/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈhɔməfoʊ̯n/, /ˈhɑməfoʊ̯n/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

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.
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.

Related terms

• homophonous (adjective)

Translations

words with the same pronunciation

• Afrikaans: homofoon
• Arabic: لَفْظَة مُتَجَانِسَة‎ f (lafẓa mutajānisa)
• Armenian: please add this translation if you can
• Catalan: homòfon
• 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 m, homofonum n
• Danish: homofon c
• Dutch: homofoon m
• Esperanto: homofono
• Estonian: homofoon
• Finnish: homofoni
• French: homophone m
• Friulian: omofon m
• Georgian: ომოფონი (omoponi)
• German: Homophon n
• Greek: ομόφωνος m (omófonos)
• Hungarian: homofon (not infrequently spelled homofón), azonos kiejtésű, de eltérő jelentésű (és gyakran eltérő alakú) szó
• Icelandic: samhljóma orð n pl
• Indonesian: homofon
• Irish: homafón m, téarma comhfhuaimneach m
• Italian: omofono m
• Japanese: 同音語 (どうおんご, dōongo)
• Kazakh: омофон (omofon)
• Khmer: សូរដូច (soo dooc), កល្បសព្ទ (kɑlpa’sap)
• Korean: 동음이의어 (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 m
• Romanian: omofon m
• Russian: омофо́н m (omofón)
• Serbo-Croatian: homofon (sh) m, istozvučnica (sh) f
• Spanish: homófono m, homófona f
• Swedish: homofon c (1)
• Thai: คำพ้องเสียง (kam-pɔ́ɔng-sǐiang)
• Turkish: sesteş kelime (1), sesteş
• Vietnamese: từ đồng âm
• Welsh: cyfunsain m, homoffon m

See also

• Appendix:English dialect-independent homophones

An Euler diagram showing the relationship between these -nyms.

Nyms (with category [cat] if any)

nym	Sound	Spelling	Meaning	phone/graph
homonym	same	same	different	homophone & homograph
heteronym (cat)	different	same	different	homograph
heterograph	same	different	different	homophone (cat)
heterophone	different	same	same	homograph
synonym	different	different	same	—
alternative spelling	same	different	same	homophone
identical	same	same	same	not applicable
distinct	different	different	different	—

Further reading

• homophone on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

French

Etymology

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 in 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.