Homonyms - English Printable Worksheet

For homonyms in scientific nomenclature, see Homonym (biology). n linguistics, a homonym is, in the strict sense, one of a group of words that share the same spelling and the same pronunciation but have different meanings.[1] Thus homonyms are simultaneously homographs (words that share the same spelling, irrespective of their pronunciation) and homophones (words that share the same pronunciation, irrespective of their spelling). The state of being a homonym is called homonymy. Examples of homonyms are the pair stalk (part of a plant) and stalk (follow/harass a person) and the pair left (opposite of right) and left (past tense of leave). A distinction is sometimes made between “true” homonyms, which are unrelated in origin, such as skate(glide on ice) and skate (the fish), and polysemous homonyms, or polysemes, which have a shared origin, such as mouth (of a river) andmouth (of an animal).[2][3]