In
linguistics, a
homonym is one of a group of words that share the same pronunciation but have different meanings, whether spelled the same or not. A more restrictive definition sees homonyms as words that are simultaneously
homographs (words that share the same spelling, regardless of their pronunciation)
and homophones (words that share the same pronunciation, regardless of their spelling). The relationship between a set of homonyms is called
homonymy. Examples of homonyms are the pair
stalk (part of a plant) and
stalk (follow/harass a person) and the pair
left (
past tense of leave) and
left (opposite of right). 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) and
mouth (of an animal).