Homonym
In linguistics, a
homonym is, in the strict sense, one of a group of words that share the same spelling and pronunciation but may have different meanings. Thus homonyms are simultaneously homographs
and homophones. The state of being a homonym is called
homonymy. Examples of homonyms are the pair
stalk and
stalk and the pair
left and
left. A distinction is sometimes made between "true" homonyms, which are unrelated in origin, such as
skate and
skate, and polysemous homonyms, or polysemes, which have a shared origin, such as
mouth and
mouth. In non-technical contexts, the term "homonym" may be used to refer to words that are either homographs
or homophones. In this looser sense, the word
row and
row and
row are considered homonyms, as are the words
read and
reed.