Terminology

Homophony. The term homophony (“sounding the same”) is commonly used to cover three types of semantic identity: homonymy, homophony, and polysemy. All of these count as homophones:

1. corn: on the cob vs. corn on toe

2. ear: of corn vs. ear of head

3. flight: from danger (flee), vs. flight in an airplane (fly), vs. flight of stairs

4. load: of dirt vs. lode in a gold mine

5. meal: ground up vs. meal at dinner time

6. mettle: in the sense of courage vs. metal in the sense of iron, copper

7. pupil: of your eye vs. pupil who is a student

8. score: score the table with a nail, vs. score high in game

9. sea: body of water vs. see verb of perception

10. sole: type of fish vs. sole only vs. sole the base of a shoe, vs. soul in a religious sense

11. trip: journey vs. trip to obstruct, cause to fall

12. waist: of a person vs. waste squander

To be homonymous (“having the same name”), words that sound alike must have different meanings and different origins: thus bear “carry,” bear “grizzly,” and bare “nude,” riddle “puzzle” and riddle “pierce with holes,” rock “stone” and rock “sway to and fro,” fit this definition. Homophony means approximately the same thing but even more broadly: words that sound alike but have different meanings, whether they have different origins or not. Dictionaries have separate entries for homonyms and homophones, thus fast(1) “quick, swift,” while fast(2) is “to abstain from food, or from some kinds of food.”