Homophones, homographs, and heteronyms

[trof]

No, this is not an ESS-EE-EX thread.
;-)

A homophone 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 that are spelled the same are also both homographs and homonyms.<1> Homophones that are spelled differently are also called heterographs.

A homograph (from the Greek: ὁμός, homós, "same" and γράφω, gráphō, "write") is a word or a group of words that share the same written form but have different meanings. When spoken, the meanings may be distinguished by different pronunciations (in which case the words are also heteronyms) or they may not (in which case the words are also both homophones and homonyms according to the definition of homonyms as words with the same writing and pronunciation; however, in a looser sense the term "homonym" may be applied to words with the same writing or pronunciation, in which case all homographs are also homonyms). Homograph disambiguation is critically important in speech synthesis, natural language processing and other fields. Identically-written different senses of what is judged to be fundamentally the same word are called polysemes; for example, wood (substance) and wood (area covered with trees).

In linguistics, heteronyms (also known as heterophones) are words that are written identically but have different pronunciations and meanings. In other words, they are homographs that are not homophones. Thus, row (propel with oars) and row (argument) are heteronyms, but mean (intend) and mean (average) are not (since they are pronounced the same). Heteronym pronunciation may vary in vowel realisation, in stress pattern (see also Initial-stress-derived noun), or in other ways:
Do you know what a buck does to does?
I like to read. In fact, I read a book yesterday.

I just wanted to clear that up.
You're welcome.
:-)

[some guy]

1. Yeah, way to slide that past the mods.

not a ess-ee-ex thread at all except for the bucks and does part. :P

thanks! Heteronym is a new word for me. Almost like heteronymph, isn't it?

:hi:

[trof]

2. Easy, dude.

We're on thin ice here.
;-)

[meow2u3]

3. Here's my submission

"Minute" (meaning itty bitty) and "minute" (meaning 60 seconds) are both a homograph and a heteronym. The first is pronounced my-NOOT amd the latter "min-it."

[Richardo]

4. Like 'polish' and 'Polish'

[trof]

6. My brother-in-law (barely literate) once ordered a 'pah-lish' dog.

We were at a hot dog stand.
"Ah'll have wunna them pah-lish dawgs."
He's from Texas.
:-)

[nuxvomica]

5. There's another definition for heteronym, IIRC

In the singular, it's a word that doesn't describe itself, like "long" or "monosyllablic". The opposite is an autonym, like "short" and "polysyllabic". Most words are heteronyms, "autonym" is an autonym, but of the two types, what is the word "heteronym"? :)

[ChoralScholar]

7. I stumbled on this site yesterday

http://learnyourdamnhomophones.com/

[Deep13]

8. Homonyms and bilinguals should have the same rights as heteronyms. nt

[BlueIris]

9. Now define homonym. nt