Homonyms

The term homonym will be familiar in its common meaning – ‘word pronounced or spelled in the same way as another’ – but the term is used with greater precision by linguists, for whom only words with identical pronunciation, also known as homophones, count as homonyms. Homonyms may or may not be spelled identically: see as a verb meaning to apprehend by vision and see meaning the diocese of a bishop are both homonyms and homographs, while gate and gait are homonyms but not homographs.

A related concept here is heteronym, which refers to homographs which are pronounced differently, e.g. ‘bow’ in to bow politely and in he adjusted his bow tie. Homonymy needs to be distinguished from polysemy, which refers to a single word having multiple meanings, for example set meaning a group of things with something in common, to prepare as in to set a trap or a set as in a part of a tennis match.

In practice, separating homonymy and polysemy can be a challenge and the boundaries are not always clear. Should we, for example, regard the two uses of foot in he hurt his foot playing football and she found it at the foot of the bed as separate lexemes foot₁ and foot₂ , i.e. homomyms, or as a single, polysemous word foot? It’s fairly clear that in this case, the criterion most lexicographers would invoke is relatedness of meaning: while foot₂ does not denote a part of the body, it shares with foot1 the notion of being at the end of something, and it is indeed where one’s feet go when sleeping. For this reason, most dictionaries would regard foot₂ as a secondary, but related, meaning of foot₁.

A secondary criterion is etymology, i.e. a word’s origins and history, though it is important not to confuse synchronic and diachronic analysis because, a native speaker does not need to know the history of his/her language to speak it fluently. For example, the term right as the antonym of left (right₁ ) and in its meaning of ‘correct’ or ‘proper’ (right₂ ), is often viewed by lexicographers as an example of polysemy rather than homonymy, on the grounds that right-handedness and the right side used to be associated with moral virtue (e.g. in the expression seated at the right hand of the Father), in contrast to the negative connotations of the word sinister, which retains its historical meaning of ‘left’ in heraldry. The historical link argues for a polysemic interpretation, even if few people maintain such prejudices today. Relatedness of meaning generally trumps etymology in such judgements, however: pupil as ‘schoolchild’ and in the sense of ‘part of the eyeball’ are in fact historically related, but the meanings have now diverged to the point where no English speaker readily makes a connection between the two.