Word.ws English Dictionary

heteronym

UK/ˈhɛt.əɹ.ə(ʊ).nɪm//ˈhɛt.ə.ɹoʊ.nɪm/

heteronym noun: calque.

heteronym: Serene buddha statue with "be still" spelled out
Photo by Hidden Hollows on Unsplash

Noun

heteronym (plural heteronyms)

  1. (dated) Calque.
  2. A word having the same spelling as another, but with a different meaning and (often) pronunciation.
    • Near-synonyms: heterophone, homograph
    • The word lead (/ˈlɛd/), for the metal, and lead (/ˈliːd/), for a leash, are heteronyms.
  3. A fictitious character created by an author for the purpose of writing in a different style.
    • […] the present paper aims at illuminating the origins of the concept under study, as well as presenting its readers with the reasons why certain characters in some of Yeats’s works go beyond mere masks and personae and fulfil the criteria to be considered as heteronyms.2018, Hamid Ghahremani Kouredarei, Nahid Shahbazi Moghadam, “W.B. Yeats and the Introduction of Heteronym into the Western Literary Canon”, in Studi Irlandesi. A Journal of Irish Studies, volume 8...
    • Heteronyms are the distinct poetic personae that Pessoa adopted during the writing of his poems, and who were presented as their true authors.2021, Niall Kennedy, “The Intercessor or Heteronym in Gilles Deleuze and Fernando Pessoa”, in Paulo de Assis, Paolo Giudici, editors, Machinic Assemblages of Desire: Deleuze and Artistic Research 3...

heteronym meaning in Thai

heteronym in Thai

word having the same spelling but different pronunciation
คำพ้องรูป kam-pɔ́ɔng-rûup

Synonyms of heteronym

Forms of heteronym

pluralheteronyms

Origin of heteronym

By surface analysis, hetero (“different”) + -onym (“name”). Compare Ancient Greek ἑτερώνυμος (heterṓnumos). First attested in 1885 in sense 1. The coining of this term in sense 3 (as Portuguese heterónimo) is usually attributed to Fernando Pessoa.

Words formed from heteronym

Questions about heteronym

What does heteronym mean?
Heteronym means calque.
What is heteronym in Thai?
Heteronym in Thai is คำพ้องรูป (kam-pɔ́ɔng-rûup). See Heteronym meaning in Thai.
What part of speech is heteronym?
Heteronym is a noun.
How do you pronounce heteronym?
Heteronym is pronounced /ˈhɛt.əɹ.ə(ʊ).nɪm/ (UK).
What is the plural of heteronym?
The plural of heteronym is heteronyms.

Words near heteronym in the dictionary

  1. heteronucleic
  2. heteronucleophile
  3. heteronucleophiles
  4. heteronucleotide
  5. heteronucleotides
  6. heteronym
  7. heteronymic
  8. heteronymies
  9. heteronymous
  10. heteronymously
  11. heteronyms

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: heteronym (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-heteronym.ogg.

Cite this entry: “heteronym.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/heteronym. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.