Thursday, September 22, 2011

Homograph, Homophone, and Homonym


Homograph, Homophone, and Homonym

What is Homograph?
Examples:
1. Lead:

  • I will lead my group to be the best team.
  • Did the police have a new lead to find your kids?
2. Close:
  • Will you please close that windows!
  • The tiger was now so close that I could smell it.
3. Wind:
  • How does a wind blow up a house?
  • Wind your watch!

So, a homograph (from the Greek: homos, "same" and grapho, "write") is a word or a group of words that share the same written form but have different meanings.


What is Homophone?
A Homophone (from the Greek: homos, "same", and phone, "voice, utterance") is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning. The words may be spelled the same, such as rose (flower) and rose (past tense of "rise"), or differently, such as carat, caret, and carrot, or to, two, and too.

Homophones of multiple words or phrases (as sometimes seen in word games) are also known as "oronyms". This term was coined by Gyles Brandreth and first published in his book The Joy of Lex (1980), and it was used in the BBC programme Never Mind the Full Stops, which also featured Brandreth as a guest.

Examples of "oronyms" (which may only be true homophones in certain dialects of English) include:
  • "ice cream" vs. "I scream"
  • "depend" vs. "deep end"
  • "example" vs. "egg sample"


What is Homonym?
In linguistics, a homonym (from the Greek homonumos, meaning "having the same name", which is the conjunction of homos, "one and the same” and onoma, "name") is one of a group of words that share the same spelling and the same pronunciation but have different meanings.
Examples:
  • - bow – a long wooden stick with horse hair that is used to play certain string instruments such as the violin
  • - bow – to bend forward at the waist in respect (e.g. "bow down")
  • - bow – the front of the ship (e.g. "bow and stern")
  • - bow – the weapon which shoots arrows (e.g. "bow and arrow")

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
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