CHAPTER 58

Linguistic Terminology

When we study English spelling, it is inevitable that we will encounter one or more technical terms.

While the spelling is no great problem, the meanings of the terms are often confusing.
A homograph is a word that is spelled the same as another word but has a different meaning, which is
usually evident in context. It may or may not have the same sound:

(^) A homophone is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but has a different meaning. It
may or may not be spelled the same way.
(^) A homonym is a word that is both a homophone and a homograph because it is the same as another in
both sound and spelling but has a different meaning.
(^) Antonyms are words that are opposite from each other in meaning:
(^) Synonyms are words with the same, or almost the same meaning as other words. We commonly find
synonyms in the thesaurus:
(^) Heteronyms are words spelled the same as other words but have a different sound and meaning:
(^) A diphthong is two vowels that together create a single sound:
(^) The digraph is two consonants that together create a unique sound:
(^) Note that there is a great deal of confusion, even among the experts, over the exact meaning of many of
these terms. Some see digraph and diphthong as the same thing. Some use homonym to cover both
homographs and homophones. Others just lump all the terms together and call them phonemes and
graphemes, words that sound alike and words that are written alike.