Word.ws English Dictionary

homoglyph

UK/ˈhəʊ.mə.ɡlɪf/US/ˈhoʊ.məˌɡlɪf/

homoglyph noun: a character identical or nearly identical in appearance to another, but which differs in the meaning it represents; thus, in character encoding terms, a character with an identical or near-identical glyph, or the glyph itself.

Noun

homoglyph (plural homoglyphs)

  1. A character identical or nearly identical in appearance to another, but which differs in the meaning it represents; thus, in character encoding terms, a character with an identical or near-identical glyph, or the glyph itself.
    • The homoglyphs I (uppercase i) and l (lowercase L) confused many who typed in the URL.
    • The E variant of the moon sign may perhaps be regarded as a homoglyph.1938, Sylvanus Griswold Morley, The Inscriptions of Petén, volume IV, page 43

Examples of homoglyph in a sentence

  • The lower case “L”, Upper case “i”, and Numeral “One” are homoglyphs.1990, NIAS Report, page 34:
  • All the other consonant phonemes are transcribed into the homoglyphs of their IPA representations.2007, Shinji Ido, Bukharan Tajik, page page 4:
  • Homoglyphs can also occur within the same writing system.2009, Theodore Rosendorf, The Typographic Desk Reference, page 50:

Forms of homoglyph

pluralhomoglyphs

Origin of homoglyph

First attested in 1938; formed as homo- (“same”) + glyph after homograph.

Words formed from homoglyph

Questions about homoglyph

What does homoglyph mean?
Homoglyph means a character identical or nearly identical in appearance to another, but which differs in the meaning it represents; thus, in character encoding terms, a character with an identical or near-identical glyph, or the glyph itself.
How do you use homoglyph in a sentence?
The lower case “L”, Upper case “i”, and Numeral “One” are homoglyphs.
What part of speech is homoglyph?
Homoglyph is a noun.
How do you pronounce homoglyph?
Homoglyph is pronounced /ˈhəʊ.mə.ɡlɪf/ (UK).
What is the plural of homoglyph?
The plural of homoglyph is homoglyphs.

Words near homoglyph in the dictionary

  1. homoglucan
  2. homoglucans
  3. homoglutathione
  4. homoglycan
  5. homoglycans
  6. homoglyph
  7. homoglyphic
  8. homoglyphically
  9. homoglyphs
  10. homoglyphy
  11. Homogocene

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: homoglyph (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-au-homoglyph.ogg.

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