Editing Homograph (section)

{{Short description|Distinct words with identical written forms}}
{{About|the grammatical use|the typographical sense|Homoglyph|the geometrical sense|Homography}}
{{globalize|date=September 2018|2=the English language|3=the Chinese language}}
[[File:Homograph homophone venn diagram.png|thumb|400px|[[Venn diagram]] showing the relationships between homographs (yellow) and related linguistic concepts]]

A '''homograph''' (from the {{langx|el|ὁμός}}, {{translit|grc|homós}} {{gloss|same}} and {{lang|el|γράφω}}, {{translit|grc|gráphō}} {{gloss|write}}) is a [[word]] that shares the same written form as another word but has a different meaning.<ref>
{{cite dictionary
|title=homograph
|quote=One of two or more words that have the same spelling but differ in origin, meaning, and sometimes pronunciation, such as ''fair'' (pleasing in appearance) and ''fair'' (market) or ''wind'' {{bracket|{{IPAc-en|w|I|n|d}}}} and ''wind'' {{bracket|{{IPAc-en|w|ai|n|d}}}}
|url=https://www.thefreedictionary.com/homograph
|via=[[The Free Dictionary]]
|dictionary=[[American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language]]
|edition=fifth
|publisher=[[Houghton Mifflin Harcourt]]
}}
</ref> However, some dictionaries insist that the words must also be pronounced differently,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hobbs |first=James |url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/Homophones_and_Homographs/vCUTBQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0 |title=Homophones and Homographs: An American Dictionary, 4th ed. |date=2006-08-04 |publisher=McFarland |isbn=978-0-7864-2488-7 |pages=3 |language=en}}</ref> while the [[Oxford English Dictionary]] says that the words should also be of "different origin".<ref>[[Oxford English Dictionary]]: ''homograph''.</ref> In this vein, ''The Oxford Guide to Practical Lexicography'' lists various types of homographs, including those in which the words are discriminated by being in a different ''word class'', such as ''hit'', the verb ''to strike'', and ''hit'', the noun ''a strike''.<ref>Atkins, BTS.; Rundell, M., [https://books.google.com/books?id=H0rc_cnr3NYC&dq=homograph+dictionary&pg=PA192 ''The Oxford Guide to Practical Lexicography''], OUP Oxford, 2008, 
pp. 192 - 193.</ref>

If, when spoken, the meanings may be distinguished by different pronunciations, the words are also [[heteronym (linguistics)|heteronym]]s. Words with the same writing ''and'' pronunciation (i.e. are both homographs and [[homophone]]s) are considered [[homonym]]s. However, in a broader sense the term "homonym" may be applied to words with the same writing ''or'' pronunciation. Homograph disambiguation is critically important in [[speech synthesis]], [[natural language processing]] and other fields. Identically written different senses of what is judged to be fundamentally the ''same'' word are called [[polyseme]]s; for example, ''wood'' (substance) and ''wood'' (area covered with trees).