Wednesday January 9, 2008
More of the same and different
I CANNOT help but follow up on the article ‘Sounds the same, sounds different’ by Stephen Kau (Dec 7).
While heteronyms are words having the same spelling but different meanings because of different pronunciations and homonyms are words having the same spelling AND the same pronunciation but different meanings depending on context, there are other categories of words in a similar vein, viz. homographs and homophones.
Homographs (Greek: homos “same” + graphein “to write”) are words having the same spelling, but not necessarily the same sound (pronunciation) and certainly different origins and meanings.
An example is the word die, which is pronounced the same way but which can have one of three meanings: (a) “to cease to exist”, (b) “a small cube with the faces etched with one to six spots, thrown to obtain a certain face-up and start a gambling game”, and (c) “a metal plate for shaping things by stamping or extrusion”.
Another example is the word moped, which is pronounced either with one syllable (moped, the past tense of mope, “to feel in low spirit”) or with two syllables (moped, a portmanteau word derived from motorcycle + pedal, to denote “a pedal cycle with motor and pedals”).
Homophones (Greek: homos “same” + phone “sound, voice”) are words having the same sound (pronunciation) but different spellings, origins and meanings, e.g. stationary and stationery.
There should be no confusion in distinguishing between the two words in a sentence when one carefully notes their word-class – stationary is an adjective. (The car smashed into a stationary steamroller} while stationery is a noun (I went into the shop to buy some stationery).
However, homophones in the same part of speech can, grammatically, be replaced one for the other (e.g. noun for noun, or verb for verb) – and such homophones may give rise to difficulty unless written and read in context. As examples of homophones of the same word-class (part of speech), one may note the following:
air/heir;
aisle/isle;
alms/arms (The soldiers gave alms/arms to the poor and downtrodden villagers);
bare/bear (The women were not allowed to bare/bear arms in the convention hall);
boy/buoy (The sailor kept a look-out for the boy/buoy);
callous/careless (Her callous/careless remark caused much embarrassment);
cite/sight/site (all three words are verbs with different meanings);
councillor/counsellor;
pedal/peddle (no confusion if noun/verb, but possible ambiguity if verb/verb).
– Dr Lim Chin Lam, Penang
Source:
RSS
