Word similarity

Language units large and small Marked forms of words - Inflection, Derivation, Declension, Conjugation · Diminutive, Augmentative Groups and categories and properties of words - Syntactic and lexical categories · Grammatical cases · Correlatives · Expletives · Adjuncts Words and meaning - Morphology · Semiotics Figures of speech, expressions, phraseology, etc. · Word similarity · Onomasiology · Ambiguity · Modality · Lexicology Segment function, interaction, reference - Clitics · Apposition· Parataxis, Hypotaxis· Attributive· Binding · Coordinations · Word and concept reference Sentence structure and style - Agreement · Ellipsis· Hedging Phonology - Articulation · Formants· Prosody · Intonation, stress, focus · Diphones · Intervocalic · Lenition · Glottal stop · Vowel_diagrams · Elision · Ablaut_and_umlaut · Phonics Analyses, models, software - Minimal pairs · Concordances · Linguistics software · Some_relatively_basic_text_processing · Word embeddings Unsorted - Contextualism · Text summarization · Accent, Dialect, Language · Pidgin, Creole · Writing_systems · Typography, orthography · Digraphs, ligatures, dipthongs · Onomastics

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Various -nyms

Same pronunciation

(Yes, the terms are a bit messy, it's not just you)

homophone

• different meaning
• (says nothing about spelling. If same spelling it is a homonym. If different spelling, it is a heterograph)
• same pronunciation
• e.g. waste, waist

heterograph

• different meaning
• different spelling
• same pronunication
• e.g. two, too

The case of:

• same meaning
• different spelling
• same pronunication
• e.g. gases, gasses

Same spelling

homograph (note: group with some more specific cases)

• different meaning
• same spelling
• (says nothing about pronunciation. If also same pronunciation, it is a homonym)

heteronyms

• different meaning
• same spelling
• different pronunciation
• e.g. desert (noun: arid region; verb: to abandon), bow (gesture; weapon)
  read (reading in present and past tense)

The case of:

• same meaning
• same spelling
• different pronunciation
• (e.g. the with and without stress, )

To complete the cases above

homonym = homograph and homophone

• different meaning
• same spelling
• same pronunciation
• e.g. mean (average; being nasty),
  stalk (plant; following)
• also turns up around equivocation - using different interpretations of the same word at different times

e.g. right is sometimes used to actually mean privilege

synonym

• same meaning (or very similar) (distinguished mostly by idiosyncrasies)
• different spelling
• different pronunication

identical words (same everything)

unrelated words (different everything)

Note that polysemy looks pretty close to homography

Paronym: Near-homonyms, or related in root (e.g. cognates)

Other relations

• Antonym: Opposition of meaning in some sense, e.g. good and bad. (Occasionally has various gradations. Seems to work best on abstract nouns)

see also auto-antonyms, words with have distinct meanings that oppose. (though as one of these meanings may fall out of style, a lot examples may seem somewhat archaic or contrived)

• Hyponym and hypernym: More specific and more general (respectively)

e.g. cutlery has hyponyms spoon, fork, etc.

Knife has hypernym cutlery.

• Meronym and holonym: part versus the whole (respectively)

You could say engine is a meronym of a car; car is a holonym in relation to its engine.

see also mereology, which more formally deals with this

• Troponym: relations to other manners of otherwise the same thing

e.g. nibble, eat, gorge are troponyms of each other

See also

• Wikipedia:-onym
• a heteronym page