homophone
English
    
    
Pronunciation
    
Noun
    
| Examples (English words) | 
|---|
homophone (plural homophones)
- (semantics) A word which is pronounced the same as another word but differs in spelling or meaning or origin.
 - A letter or group of letters which are pronounced the same as another letter or group of letters.
 
Usage notes
    
A homophone is a type of homonym in the loose sense of that term (a word which sounds or is spelled the same as another). (The strict sense of homonym is a word that both sounds and is spelled the same as another word.) A homograph is a word with the same spelling as another but a completely unrelated meaning. Homographs are not necessarily homophones. See homonym § Usage notes for examples.
Derived terms
    
Related terms
    
- homophonous (adjective)
 
Translations
    
  | 
See also
    
- Appendix:English dialect-independent homophones
 

| Noun (cat) | Sound | Spelling | Meaning | phone/graph | 
|---|---|---|---|---|
| homonym | same | same | different | homophone & homograph | 
| heteronym (cat) | different | same | different | heterophone & homograph | 
| homophone | same | different | different | homophone (cat) & heterograph | 
| alternative pronunciation | different | same | same | heterophone & homograph | 
| synonym | different | different | same | heterophone & heterograph | 
| alternative spelling | same | different | same | homophone & heterograph | 
| identical | same | same | same | homophone & homograph | 
| distinct | different | different | different | heterophone & heterograph | 
French
    
    Etymology
    
Borrowed from Ancient Greek ὁμόφωνος (homóphōnos, “speaking the same language, making the same sound, in agreement, in unison”), from ὁμός (homós, “same”) + -φωνος (-phōnos, “with respect to language or sound”), a suffix derived from φωνή (phōnḗ, “sound, language”), in the linguistic sense coined by French philologist Jean-François Champollion 1822 (for the adjective) and 1824 (for the noun).
Pronunciation
    
- (mute h) IPA(key): /ɔ.mɔ.fɔn/
 Audio (file) - Rhymes: -ɔn
 - Homophone: homophones
 
See also
    
 Homophone on the French  Wikipedia.Wikipedia fr
Further reading
    
- “homophone”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.