Something caught my eye while reading an article on wildlife conservation yesterday that never struck me before, probably because I haven't seen these words in such close proximity. But here we have does the verb and does the noun, the plural of female deer...does and does...two words with identical spelling, different pronunciation (which disqualifies them as homonyms), and, of course, meanings that are light years apart. Is there a --nym for this one? If not should we create one? How 'bout it, tsuwm...do you have something on this? (Or could this be some obvious nomenclature I'm forgetting?)
On the lighter side this also brought to mind doughs, doze, does, and 'dose!
Thanks for the link, caradea! And welcome to the board!
Evidently does seems to be one of the more compound homographs...the site gives a great example, does the buck see the does?
It also gives an example of homographs where the capitalization differs...august and August, and calls these capitonyms. There's a -nym I never heard before!
well, I don't know that I agree entirely with this. my understanding of homograph is: a word of the same spelling as another, but of different origin and meaning; e.g., base and base, bore and bore, cleave and cleave.
wheras a heteronym is a homograph having the same spelling as another, but a different *sound and meaning; e.g., does and does, bass and bass, etc.
Thanks, tsuwm...now I can add hetero-- to my --nym list!
And, realizing in retrospect that this is probably a big YART to the Long-Time Legends of the board (sorry, I was too hot. tired, and lazy to do a search that night), I thought, perhaps, we could turn this into a New --Nym thread to list new, strange, and interesting Wordonyms. For instance, so far on this thread I've added capitonym and heteronym to my own --nymlist. Precluding the common and obvious such as synonym, homonym, antonym, tswumnym, Jackienym, etc. , and making allowance for --nym derivatives such as homograph, how many strange Wordonyms are out there?
Psst--Honey, could you switch this to Wordplay and Fun? I know I've violated Aunt Mav's suggested rule of keeping Q & A serious, myself, but I do want to let him know I remember it. This DOES sound like a lot of fun!
The rule-o-nym queen (alternate identity when I'm not the Gutter Queen--hi belM),
The wide posts have happened before ... and if memory serves it happens when a poster composes in another place and pastes into the regular AWAD reply box ... or something like that. I can't read the wide posts very well as I get dizzy(ier) with all that swooshing back and forth. And I hate to miss the fun. Sometimes it goes back to normal width on second page or the poster corrects it and all posts follow suit. There's another one - suit! (whirling off to another thread)
homophone: same sound different spelling e.g. seen scene homograph: different sound same spelling e.g. lead (Pb) lead (opposite of follow) homonym: same sound same spelling e.g. bear (carry) bear (Bruin)
Row (line) is a homophone of roe, a homograph of row (quarrel), and a homonym of row (propel a boat with an oar).
Question for ya, Bingley. Given the roots of the three terms you share (homo, phone, graph, and nym), I wonder if a homophone must have different spelling and if a homograph must have a different spelling.
If homophone means "same sound," then words that sound identical are homophones regardless of whether the spellings are identical or not. Similarly, words that are spelled the same regardless of whether the pronunciations are different are homographs.
If one goes by etymology alone, then the terms could be more inclusive, as Brandon suggests, but then you would lose two perfectly good and much needed terms and not have anything to replace them with. I suppose you could call them heterophones and heterographs if you wanted but they would be open to over-inclusiveness as well.
Is there a -nym for words that are a different word when read backwards, like "dog" and "god," or "pot" and "top"? What's the longest that you know?
my latest, greatest favoritist word site (well, besides this one) offers the simple term "reversal", and says that D-E-S-S-E-R-T-S / S-T-R-E-S-S-E-D is the longest such phenomenon.
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On the lighter side this also brought to mind doughs, doze, does, and 'dose!
, and making allowance for --nym derivatives such as homograph, how many strange Wordonyms are out there?
, so I couldn't possibly post it in this part of the Board without being apprehended by the gutternymfora police
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