
A heteronym (also known as a heterophone) is a word that has a different pronunciation and meaning from another word but the same spelling. These are
homographs that are not
homophones. Thus, ''
lead
Lead () is a chemical element; it has Chemical symbol, symbol Pb (from Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a Heavy metal (elements), heavy metal that is density, denser than most common materials. Lead is Mohs scale, soft and Ductility, malleabl ...
'' (
/ˈlɛd/ the metal) and ''
lead
Lead () is a chemical element; it has Chemical symbol, symbol Pb (from Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a Heavy metal (elements), heavy metal that is density, denser than most common materials. Lead is Mohs scale, soft and Ductility, malleabl ...
'' (
/ˈliːd/ a leash) are heteronyms, but ''
mean'' (
/ˈmin/ average) and ''
mean'' (
/ˈmin/ intend) are not, since they are pronounced the same. Heteronym pronunciation may vary in vowel realisation, in stress pattern, or in other ways.
Description
A heteronym is a
homograph that is not a
homophone, a word that has a different pronunciation and meaning from another word with the same spelling. Heteronym pronunciation may vary in
vowel realisation, in
stress pattern, or in other ways.
"Heterophone" literally just means "different sound", and this term is sometimes applied to words that are just pronounced differently, irrespective of their spelling. Such a definition would include virtually every pair of words in the language, so "heterophone" in this sense is normally restricted to instances where there is some particular reason to highlight the different sound. For example,
puns normally involve homophones, but in the case of heterophonic (or imperfect) puns, the two words sound different, and yet similar enough for one to suggest the other (for example, ''mouth'' and ''mouse'').
Types
Most heteronyms are doubles. Triple heteronyms are extremely rare in English; three examples, ''sin'', ''mobile'' and ''does'', are listed below.
Proper noun
A proper noun is a noun that identifies a single entity and is used to refer to that entity ('' Africa''; ''Jupiter''; '' Sarah''; ''Walmart'') as distinguished from a common noun, which is a noun that refers to a class of entities (''continent, ...
s can sometimes be heteronyms. For example, the final syllable in the
US state of Oregon is pronounced (or ), while in the name of the village of
Oregon in Wisconsin, the final syllable is pronounced . Other examples include local pronunciations of
Cairo, Georgia;
Versailles, Kentucky; and
Milan, Tennessee—compared to the more well-known
Cairo
Cairo ( ; , ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Egypt and the Cairo Governorate, being home to more than 10 million people. It is also part of the List of urban agglomerations in Africa, largest urban agglomeration in Africa, L ...
,
Versailles
The Palace of Versailles ( ; ) is a former royal residence commissioned by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, Yvelines, Versailles, about west of Paris, in the Yvelines, Yvelines Department of Île-de-France, Île-de-France region in Franc ...
, and
Milan
Milan ( , , ; ) is a city in northern Italy, regional capital of Lombardy, the largest city in Italy by urban area and the List of cities in Italy, second-most-populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of nea ...
—or the difference between the pronunciation of
Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville is the List of cities in Kentucky, most populous city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, sixth-most populous city in the Southeastern United States, Southeast, and the list of United States cities by population, 27th-most-populous city ...
() and the town of
Louisville, New York ().
There are also pairs which ignore
case and include both
initialism
An acronym is a type of abbreviation consisting of a phrase whose only pronounced elements are the initial letters or initial sounds of words inside that phrase. Acronyms are often spelled with the initial letter of each word in all caps wi ...
s and regular words, e.g., ''US'' and ''us''.
Heteronyms also occur in non-
alphabetic languages. For example, 20% of the 2400 most common
Chinese characters
Chinese characters are logographs used Written Chinese, to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Of the four independently invented writing systems accepted by scholars, they represe ...
have multiple readings; ''e.g.,'' 行 can represent ''háng profession' or ''xíng'' 'OK'. In Arabic, vowels are normally not written, leading to ambiguous written words such as <كتب> /ktb/, which can be read /kataba/ 'he wrote', /kutubun/ 'books', or /kutiba/ 'it was written'; it is unclear whether these should be considered heteronyms, since they are unambiguous when
fully vocalized.
Examples
Heteronyms with definitions
English
In some of these cases,
American and British English pronunciations differ. One systematic case appears in the
stress pattern of some deverbal nouns. Many of these words have the same origin, and similar meanings, and are essentially the same word. True heteronyms require the two words to be completely unrelated, which is a rare occurrence.
For a longer list, see
wikt:English heteronyms.
French
In French, most heteronyms result from certain endings being pronounced differently in verbs and nouns. In particular, ''-ent'' as a third person plural verb ending is silent while as an adjective ending, it is pronounced .
Modern Greek
Modern Greek spelling is largely unambiguous, but there are a few cases where a word has distinct learned and vernacular meaning and pronunciation, despite having the same root, and where
is pronounced vs. ; Some of these distinctions are being neutralized in modern speech.
Italian
Italian spelling is largely unambiguous, althouɡh there are some exceptions:
* open and closed and ( and ) are not distinguished;
* the voiced and unvoiced pronunciations of and ( and ) are not distinguished;
* stress, which is usually but not always on the penult, is not marked except when it is on the final syllable;
* in some cases, digraphs and trigraphs like (), (), (), () are pronounced using the values of their component letters;
* and may have a vocalic () or a consonantal () value.
When stress is on the final, the vowel is written with an accent: mori 'mulberries' and morì 'he/she died'. Some monosyllabic words are also differentiated with an accent: e 'and' and è 'he/she is'. These cases are not heteronyms.
Some common cases:
Dutch
Dutch has heteronyms which vary in stress position, known as
klemtoonhomogramen
' 'stress homograms', such as '' appel'': 'apple' ''vs.'' 'appeal' (formerly written ''appèl''). Other examples include '' beamen'', '' bedelen'', '' hockeyster'', '' kantelen'', '' misdadiger'', '' overweg'', '' verspringen'', '' verwerpen''.
The word ''plant
Plants are the eukaryotes that form the Kingdom (biology), kingdom Plantae; they are predominantly Photosynthesis, photosynthetic. This means that they obtain their energy from sunlight, using chloroplasts derived from endosymbiosis with c ...
'' is generally pronounced , but may be pronounced in the sense 'he/she plans'.
German
German has few heteronyms, for example:[Tatjana Lackner, "Homographe", ''Die Schule des Sprechens'', 12 January 2018]
/ref>
* Some vary in stress position: :wiktionary:umfahren#German, ''umfahren'' 'to knock down' vs. ''umfahren'' 'to bypass'; ''übersetzen'' 'to translate' vs. ''übersetzen'' 'to traverse'; ''Spiegelei'' 'fried egg' vs. ''Spiegelei'' 'mirroring'.
* Some are compounded differently: ''Staubecken'' as ''Stau-becken'' vs. ''Staub-Ecken'' or ''Wachstube'' as 'Wach-stube' vs. 'Wachs-tube'; etc.
* Several are borrowings: ''modern'' 'to molder' (derived from ''Moder'') vs. ''modern'' 'modern' (borrowed from French) or ''Montage'' 'Mondays' vs. ''Montaĝe'' 'mounting, installing, assembling' (the latter borrowed from French).
See also
* Homograph
* Homonym
* Synonym
* Shibboleth
Notes
{{DEFAULTSORT:Heteronym (Linguistics)
Types of words
Homonymy