homonyma

Homonyma is a term used in linguistics to refer to words that share the same form but have different meanings. In English, the standard term is homonym (plural homonyms), but in some languages or dictionaries the form homonyma is used as a direct counterpart. Broadly, a homonym can be any pair or group of words that look or sound the same while signaling different concepts.

Homonyms can be further classified by how they relate to spelling and pronunciation. Homographs are words that are spelled identically but may have different pronunciations and meanings, such as lead (to guide) and lead (the metal), which are pronounced differently. Homophones are words that sound the same but may be spelled differently, such as knight and night. A true or perfect homonym is a word form that is both a homograph and a homophone for another word with a distinct meaning, though definitions vary by linguistic tradition.

These phenomena can create ambiguity in communication and are common sources of puns and wordplay. They also pose challenges for language learners, dictionaries, and natural language processing, where disambiguation relies on context, syntax, and sometimes etymology.

Related concepts include polysemy, where a single word has related but distinct senses within one lexical item, and the narrower use of homonymy that some scholars reserve for words that are both homophonic and homographic with unrelated meanings. In practice, usage choices differ by language and scholarly tradition, with English favoring homonym as a broad umbrella term and more precise labels (homograph, homophone) for specific cases.