homoglyph

English

WOTD – 21 February 2012

Etymology

First attested in 1938; formed as homo- (“same”) +‎ glyph after homograph.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation, UK) enPR: hŏʹmōglĭf, IPA^(key): /ˈhɒməʊɡlɪf/

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

Noun

homoglyph (plural homoglyphs)

1. (linguistics, computing) A character identical or nearly identical in appearance to another, but which differs in the meaning it represents; thus, in character encoding terms, a character with an identical or near-identical glyph, or the glyph itself.

   The homoglyphs I (uppercase i) and l (lowercase L) confused many who typed in the URL.

   • 1938, Sylvanus Griswold Morley, The Inscriptions of Petén‎^[1], volume IV, page 43:

     The E variant of the moon sign may perhaps be regarded as a homoglyph.

   • 1990, NIAS Report‎^[2], page 34:

     The lower case “L”, Upper case “i”, and Numeral “One” are homoglyphs.

   • 2007, Shinji Ido, Bukharan Tajik, page page 4:

     All the other consonant phonemes are transcribed into the homoglyphs of their IPA representations.

   • 2009, Theodore Rosendorf, The Typographic Desk Reference‎^[3], page 50:

     The pair shown is the letter f and the guilder currency sign [ƒ]. Homoglyphs can also occur within the same writing system.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:homoglyph.

Coordinate terms

• allographs (variant forms for the same grapheme)

Derived terms

• homoglyphic
• homoglyphically
• homoglyphy

 

Translations

a character identical or nearly identical in appearance to another, but which differs in the meaning it represents

• French: homoglyphe (fr) m
• German: Homoglyph
• Korean: 호모글리프 (homogeullipeu)
• Russian: омо́глиф m (omóglif)