Talk:List of English homographs

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Given that "des", "en", "oblige", "riches", "terrible" and "vie" only occur in their differing pronunciations as part of various foreign phrases (as in "en route", "noblesse oblige", "nouveaux riches", "enfant terrible", "la vie en rose"; I can't think of an example right now for "des", except for "Des Moines", and I don't know how that is pronounced), to what extent can they be considered English heteronyms? The fact that they only occur in phrases also makes their inclusion dubious, in my opinion. — Paul G 14:44, 3 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Likewise with "dos" ("dos-a-dos"?) and "voyage" ("bon voyage"). — Paul G 14:22, 4 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know how to do the pronunciation stuff, but could someone add the example of resign? As in 'resign to one's fate' and 'resign the contract.' MrCheshire 04:02, 5 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Most homographs beginning with re are hyphenated (at least in UK English) in the "again" sense to aid the pronunciation; hence "to re-sign the contract", "the band have re-formed". These are therefore not really homographs. — Paul G 07:28, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wiktionary's list

Contributors to this list might like to refer to Wiktionary's list of heteronyms (a heteronym being a word having two different pronunciations but the same spelling, in contrast to a homograph, which is two distinct (in that they have different etymologies) words spelled the same way). This list is partly based on the homographs listed here in dickapedia and has been extended. — Paul G 07:28, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

addition

Ops....SORRY? :)

Delete:

Celtic
Mobile(3) is offensive.

To whom? To people who think living in a trailer is shameful? You offend my grandmother with your assertion that it's "offensive" to live in a trailer. (BTW, if I suggest that there are ghettos in Harlem or East St. Louis, will you find that offensive, too?) TheEditrix2 15:04, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

something that u do is in valid just like if you have a password and u misspelled it the computer will say this password is invalid —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.164.68.159 (talk) 13:28, 15 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Pitch

Should the word 'pitch' (as in: cricket/tar/angle of roof/"sales pitch"/frequency of sound) be added? 203.219.31.68 (talk) 15:49, 16 January 2008 (UTC) when you pitch u throw a ball to a person who have a baseball bat —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.164.68.159 (talk) 13:23, 15 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Some other words missing

This list should include 'arm', 'fair', 'fast', 'ground', 'left' and 'sound'. I'll try to come up with some examples. Schmorgluck (talk) 13:37, 7 March 2009 (UTC) i have a pussy cat but pussy could mean more things other than a cat that name is a pussy[reply]

Some other obvious omissions: RIGHT: not left / not wrong / opposite of 'duty' LEFT: not right / departed / remaining MEAN: signify / average / opposite of 'nice' (US) / opposite of 'generous' (UK) PRESENT: current / in attendance / gift / introduce CURRENT: present / flow WINDY: draughty / twisting SPELL: write letter by letter / period / hex COLON: in punctuation / in alimentary canal CROSS: X+ / somewhat angry CONTRACT: legal agreement / shrink

sake

Should sake be included?

Purpose (n), as in for its own sake, or for the sake of argument, or for old times' sake
Japanese rice wine (n)

These seem to be two different meanings with different pronounciation and etymology. Coyets (talk) 14:30, 23 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

tender

tender could mean like legal tender, or like tasty, soft meat... look in Hamlet, Polonius uses this kind of wordplay.

The word "tender" can also be a verb, meaning "offer" or "give"; it's also a "person who tends to or takes care of" someone else. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.246.252.97 (talk) 09:11, 27 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

IPAc-en conversion

The addition of mouse-over pronunciation guides gave a warning, 'Warning: This page contains too many expensive parser function calls.' Is this a large problem? -- deflective (talk) 10:41, 15 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Bat" and "Bear"?

Re the introduction, I don't see how "bat" and "bear" are an example of homographs whose meanings have diverged. "Bat" and "bear" aren't homographs at all. Am I missing something? Jzimba (talk) 13:39, 30 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Two years later, I finally get it. There is no connection being claimed between "bat" and "bear." Rather, each is an example of the stated phenomenon. I'm going to delete "bear" since only one example is strictly necessary, and at least on first reading I found this pretty confusing. --Jzimba (talk) 01:28, 26 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Two kinds of homographs

As noted in the second sentence, there are two kinds of homographs, the kind that are pronounced the same (homophones) and the kind that are prounounced differently. Currently, the latter type is called "heteronym," and this is a standard term. But there is another standard term for words that are pronounced differently, "heterophone," and this is actually clearer since it is Greek for 'different sound,' which is the literal description of the class. Indeed, the Wiki page for "heteronym" says "(also known as a heterophone)." So I have added this parenthetical to the article here as well. Jzimba (talk) 15:34, 2 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

May

Someone has tagged the word "may" as being dubious, but failed to start the discussion. Is there any reason for this tag to remain? Per Wiktionary, "may" has the well-known verb form (permission or possibility, and others) as well as a noun form (an alternative name for the Hawthorn bush, or its flowers). Doesn't seem very dubious to me but waiting for others to provide input. Etamni | ✉ | ✓ 01:28, 8 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I may have been born in the month of May. BobGreenwade (talk) 23:09, 18 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Words starting with "re"

I came to copyedit but can't for the life of me figure out what this is trying to say: "When the prefix "re-" is added to a monosyllabic word, the hi word gains currency both as a noun and as a verb." What is "the hi word" supposed to mean? New? And while most examples I can think of are monosyllabic, (refuse, replay, reshoot, reform, recall, recap, recharge) the pattern works at least occasionally for polysyllabic words, too (redesign). And then there are cases where a word with a "re-" prefix has verb and adjective meanings (reanimate). --FLRdorothy (talk) 20:03, 31 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Proper nouns on this list

I noticed there were several proper nouns on this list, specifically ones that referred to more than one specified place (Washington, Djibouti, etc.) I think it might be better to remove those? The amount of place names that could equally be considered homographs are far too numerous. UrsaMajr (talk) 13:44, 17 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I removed Djibouti. Wikipedia has separate entries for the country of Djibouti and its capital, Djibouti City, which makes up 2/3 of the country's population.

I left Georgia as it is a both a woman's name and a state and a country. Washington is both a state in the US and the capital of the US.

Actually being a woman's name shouldn't count or we'd have to include Carolina and Virginia.

Asia is also a woman's name but a fanciful one taken after the continent. They are both proper names.

I added the suggestions for addition above.

One use of a list of homographs is to help catch translation errors. That might be the criterion for the list, whether it helps disambiguate.

A general comment on English homographs -

Since the same word in English can serve either as a noun, a verb or an adjective, that adds enormously to the potential candidates for the list. You'd probably need to draw the line against that somewhere. For instance, is house a homograph? You may house on a house boat, yet... JPLeonard (talk) 04:22, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree completely. Similarly, there are a huge number of words (other than proper nouns) where different meanings have diverged from the original meaning. These are far too numerous too, and it would be better to remove them from the list.----Ehrenkater (talk) 10:47, 18 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Homograph and their meanings with the parts of speech their are

Homograph and their meanings with the parts of speech their are 102.90.57.247 (talk) 18:45, 25 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

English

Homograph and their meanings with the parts of speech their are 102.90.57.247 (talk) 18:46, 25 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]