Homonymy
Homonymy is a relation between two or more words which have the same form but different, unrelated meanings.
There are two types of homonyms:
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Homophony / Homophones (same pronunciation but different spelling) Words that sound the same as other words but have a different meaning or spelling, or both, are called homophones, such as the noun sea and the verb see or the nouns flower and flour. |
Homography / Homographs (same spelling but different pronunciation) Homographs are words that are spelled the same but have a different meaning. An example is the word bow /baʊ/, meaning the front of a ship or to bow one’s head, which is spelled the same way as the word bow /bəʊ/ meaning the weapon for shooting arrows or the decorative element on a present. |
Besides being semantically unrelated, homonyms normally have different historical origins (etymologies).