Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics.pdf

A-Z 519homonymy [Grk ónyma (=ónoma) ‘name’]A type of lexical ambiguity involving two or more different words: Homonymousexpressions are phonologically ( homophony) and orthographically (homography) identical but have different meanings and often distinct etymologicalorigins, e.g. found (‘establish’ or ‘cast’), kitty (‘fund’ or ‘cat’), scour (‘polish’ or‘search'). Occasionally, homonyms have a common etymological origin, e.g. meter (‘unitof length’ or ‘instrument used to measure’). The etymological criterion is generallyproblematic, since the point of divergence from a common etymological origin is oftenunclear. Homonymy is traditionally distinguished from polysemy in that a polysemicexpression has several closely related variations in its meaning, e.g. green (‘fresh,’‘inexperienced,’ and ‘raw’, among others), while the meanings of homonymousexpressions have no apparent semantic relation to one another.Diachronically, homonymy arises through ‘coincidental’ phonetic and semanticdevelopments, through which (a) originally distinct expressions collapse into a singleform (e.g. sound 1 ‘distinctive noise’