heteronym

WOTD – 21 November 2008    

English

Wikipedia

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA: /ˈhɛt.əɹ.ə(ʊ).nɪm/
• (US) IPA: /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

• Finnish: heteronyymi (fi)
• French: hétéronyme (fr) m
• German: Heteronym (de) n
• Greek: ετερώνυμο (el) (eterónimo) n 
• Khmer: វិកល្បពាក្យ (km)
• Portuguese: heterónimo (pt) m (Portugal), heterônimo (pt) m (Brazil)

• Russian: омограф (ru) (omógraf) m , гетероним (ru) (getɛrónim) m 
• Serbo-Croatian:

  Cyrillic: хетероним (sh) m

  Roman: heteronim (sh) m

• Spanish: heterónimo (es) m
• Turkish: eşadlı (tr)

ficitious character writing in a different style

• Finnish: heteronyymi (fi)
• French: hétéronyme (fr) m
• Polish: heteronim (pl) m
• Portuguese: heterónimo (pt) m (Portugal), heterônimo (pt) m (Brazil)
• Russian: гетероним (ru) (getɛrónim) m 

• Serbo-Croatian:

  Cyrillic: хетероним (sh) m

  Roman: heteronim (sh) m

• Spanish: heterónimo (es) m

See also

An Euler diagram showing the relationship between these -nyms.

Different Meanings

Nym	Sound	Spelling	Category
homonym	same	same
heteronym	different	same	(cat)
homograph	not specified	same
homophone	same	different	(cat)
heterophone	different	different
synonym	different	different

• List of English heteronyms defined in Wiktionary