Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun One of two or more words that have identical spellings but different meanings and pronunciations, such as row (a series of objects arranged in a line), pronounced (rō), and row (a fight), pronounced (rou).
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A word having a different sound and meaning from another, but the same spelling, as lead, conduct, and lead, a metal: distinguished from
homonym in a narrow sense—that is, a word having the same sound as another, but not the same spelling. - noun A different name of the same thing; a name in one language precisely translating a name in another language; a linguistic synonym, having literally the same meaning as some other word of another language.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun That which is heteronymous; a thing having a different name or designation from some other thing; -- opposed to
homonym .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun linguistics A
word having the samespelling as another, but adifferent pronunciation andmeaning . - noun literature A
fictitious character created by anauthor for the purpose ofwriting in a different style.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun two words are heteronyms if they are spelled the same way but differ in pronunciation
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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A heteronym is a homograph with differing meaning and pronunciation.
The Volokh Conspiracy » Why Do “We Need a Good, Violent Movie About Salamis”? 2009
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Their stories were varied enough that some of their pennames conveyed a "heteronym," a term coined by the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa who wrote his poetry and prose under a variety of pen names.
Archive 2008-04-01 Chris Perridas 2008
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Their stories were varied enough that some of their pennames conveyed a "heteronym," a term coined by the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa who wrote his poetry and prose under a variety of pen names.
Antiquarian Weird Tales: Our Pulp Fiction Heritage and the Significance of Moldering Magazines Chris Perridas 2008
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Interesting that the homograph and heteronym pages missed a few, like Nice/nice.
The Volokh Conspiracy » Why Do “We Need a Good, Violent Movie About Salamis”? 2009
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Also, can you imagine this ad featuring, say, a male basketball player and the phrase “unstoppable charm”? heteronym 11:50 am on February 19, 2009 | # | Reply
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Neither's completely perfect for instance a homograph doesn't imply that the pronunciation is different and the heteronym doesn't imply that the meaning need be different.
Homographs and Heteronyms Jono 2005
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Thus the lines and philosophical essays he attributed to himself (many of them rather bad) also belong to a heteronym.
Spurious 2009
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Carl Withey Elbridge, New York Donald Drury Long Beach, California A Harvest of Heteronyms Try these out on the first ten people you meet: (1) homonym, (2) homograph, (3) heteronym.
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The former gives heteronym as "a word with the same spelling as another but with a different meaning and pronunciation (Ex: tear, drop of water from the eye, tear, to rip)"; the latter says,
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My guess is that all ten of them will know homonym, fewer than half will be familiar with homograph, and possibly one or two may recognize heteronym.
ruzuzu commented on the word heteronym
Cf. capitonym.
November 5, 2010
jodi commented on the word heteronym
Useful for puns. See http://www.heteronym.com/
May 11, 2011