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From: elbaum@reed.UUCP (Daniel Elbaum)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: homonymns vs homophones
Message-ID: <803@reed.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 13-Jan-85 15:34:59 EST
Article-I.D.: reed.803
Posted: Sun Jan 13 15:34:59 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 16-Jan-85 04:48:18 EST
References: <11900002@hpfcnml.UUCP>
Reply-To: elbaum@reed.UUCP (PUT YOUR NAME HERE)
Organization: Reed College, Portland, Oregon
Lines: 28
Summary: 

In article <11900002@hpfcnml.UUCP> robert@hpfcnml.UUCP (robert) writes:
>In school sets of words such as "sent" and "scent" were called
>homonymns.  I have been corrected and told that these are
>homophones.

Homonyms are orthographically identical but lexically distinct, e.g.
bay - to howl,
bay - an inlet.

Homonymy (what a fun word to say ;-}) is often difficult to
distinguish from polysemy, the property of a word bearing several
meanings, as
dark - obscure,
dark - evil.

The safest criterion seems to be etymology, but this is a dark field.


                                       Daniel Elbaum

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