homonüümia

Homonüümia is the linguistic phenomenon in which two or more lexical items share the same form but have different, often unrelated, meanings. The form can be a word’s spelling, its pronunciation, or both. In many languages, including Estonian, homonüümia gives rise to ambiguities that context or grammatical cues must resolve.

The concept is commonly discussed through the related notions of homophones and homographs. Homophones are words that sound the same but may be written differently and have different meanings (for example, knight and night). Homographs are words that are spelled the same but may be pronounced differently and have different meanings (for example, lead as a verb vs. lead the metal). When a single form has several meanings that are not semantically related, it is often described as homonymy. If meanings are related in a systematic way, linguists may call it polysemy rather than true homonymy.

Homonüümia differs from polysemy, which involves a single word form with related senses that arise from historical or semantic extension. In contrast, homonymy typically involves independent origins and unrelated meanings paired by coincidence of form. The phenomenon is common across languages and has practical implications for lexicography, language processing, and natural language understanding, influencing how dictionaries are organized, how word sense disambiguation is approached, and how search systems handle ambiguous queries.

Etymologically, the term derives from Greek roots meaning “same name,” reflecting the idea that different meanings share the same form.