heteronym

English

WOTD – 21 November 2008

Etymology

By surface analysis, hetero (“different”) +‎ -onym (“name”). Compare Ancient Greek ἑτερώνυμος (heterṓnumos). First attested in 1885 in sense 1. The coining of this term in sense 3 (as Portuguese heterónimo) is usually attributed to Fernando Pessoa.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈhɛt.əɹ.ə(ʊ).nɪm/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈhɛt.ə.ɹoʊ.nɪm/, /ˈhɛt.ə.ɹə.nɪm/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

Noun

heteronym (plural heteronyms)

2. (Can we verify⁽⁺⁾ this sense?) (linguistics, dated) Calque. [from 1885]
4. (linguistics) A word having the same spelling as another, but with a different meaning and (often) pronunciation. [from 1889]

   Coordinate term: capitonym

   Near-synonyms: heterophone, homograph

   The word lead (/ˈlɛd/), for the metal, and lead (/ˈliːd/), for a leash, are heteronyms.

   The word agape, "astonished" or "wide open," is a heteronym of agape, "Christian love."

6. (literature) A fictitious character created by an author for the purpose of writing in a different style.
   • 2018, Hamid Ghahremani Kouredarei, Nahid Shahbazi Moghadam, “W.B. Yeats and the Introduction of Heteronym into the Western Literary Canon”, in Studi Irlandesi. A Journal of Irish Studies, volume 8, number 8, →DOI, page 357:

     […] the present paper aims at illuminating the origins of the concept under study, as well as presenting its readers with the reasons why certain characters in some of Yeats’s works go beyond mere masks and personae and fulfil the criteria to be considered as heteronyms.

   • 2021, Niall Kennedy, “The Intercessor or Heteronym in Gilles Deleuze and Fernando Pessoa”, in Paulo de Assis, Paolo Giudici, editors, Machinic Assemblages of Desire: Deleuze and Artistic Research 3, Leuven University Press, →ISBN, page 274:

     Heteronyms are the distinct poetic personae that Pessoa adopted during the writing of his poems, and who were presented as their true authors.

Derived terms

• heteronymic
• heteronymous

Translations

word having the same spelling but different pronunciation

• Catalan: heterònim (ca)
• Czech: heteronymum n
• Finnish: heteronyymi
• French: hétéronyme (fr) m
• German: Heteronym (de) n
• Greek: ετερώνυμο (el) n (eterónymo)
• Hungarian: heteronima, azonos alakú, (de) eltérő kiejtésű és jelentésű szó
• Khmer: វិកល្បពាក្យ (vi’kɑlpa’ piek)
• Polish: heteronim m inan
• Portuguese: heterónimo (pt) m (Portugal), heterônimo (pt) m (Brazil)
• Russian: омо́граф (ru) m (omógraf), гетеро́ним m (getɛrónim)
• Serbo-Croatian:

  Cyrillic: хетероним m

  Latin: heteronim (sh) m

• Slovak: heteronymum n
• Spanish: heterónimo (es) m
• Thai: คำพ้องรูป (th) (kam-pɔ́ɔng-rûup)
• Turkish: eşadlı (tr)

fictitious character writing in a different style

• Finnish: heteronyymi
• French: hétéronyme (fr) m
• Polish: heteronim m inan
• Portuguese: heterónimo (pt) m (Portugal), heterônimo (pt) m (Brazil)
• Russian: гетеро́ним m (getɛrónim)
• Serbo-Croatian:

  Cyrillic: хетероним m

  Latin: heteronim (sh) m

• Spanish: heterónimo (es) m

See also

• Category:English heteronyms
• homonym
• polyphone (a letter [or combination of letters] that can be pronounced in two or more different ways, such as 長 / 长 in Chinese, pronounced [cháng] in the sense of ’long’ and [zhǎng] in the sense of ’to grow’)

Euler diagram of choice semantic relations.

Nyms (with category if any)

Noun (category)	Sound	Spelling	Meaning	phone/graph
identical	same	same	same	homophone & homograph
homophone (category)	same	different	different	homophone & heterograph
alternative spelling	same	different	same	homophone & heterograph
homonym	same	same	different	homophone & homograph
synonym	different	different	same	heterophone & heterograph
heteronym (category)	different	same	different	heterophone & homograph
alternative pronunciation	different	same	same	heterophone & homograph
distinct	different	different	different	heterophone & heterograph