Editing Homophone (section)

{{Short description|Word that has identical pronunciation as another word, but differs in meaning or spelling}}
{{About|the term in linguistics||Homophony (disambiguation)}}
{{Redirect|Heterography|the practice of writing one language in the script of another|Garshunography}}
{{Distinguish|Homophobe}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=May 2022}}
[[File:Homograph homophone venn diagram.png|thumb|400px|[[Venn diagram]] showing the relationships between ''homophones'' (blue circle) and related linguistic concepts]]
{{linguistics}}

A '''homophone''' ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|h|ɒ|m|ə|f|oʊ|n|,_|ˈ|h|oʊ|m|ə|-}}){{efn|name=etymology}} is a word that is [[Pronunciation|pronounced]] the same as another word but differs in meaning or in spelling. The two words may be [[Spelling|spelled]] the same, for example ''rose'' (flower) and ''rose'' (past tense of "rise"), or spelled differently, as in ''rain'', ''reign'', and ''rein''. The term ''homophone'' sometimes applies to units longer or shorter than words, for example a phrase, letter, or groups of letters which are pronounced the same as a counterpart. Any unit with this property is said to be ''homophonous'' ({{IPAc-en|h|ə|ˈ|m|ɒ|f|ən|ə|s}}).

Homophones that are spelled the same are both [[homograph]]s and [[homonym]]s. For example, the word ''read'', in "He is well ''read''" and in "Yesterday, I ''read'' that book".{{efn|
According to the strict sense of homonyms as words with the same spelling ''and'' pronunciation; however, homonyms according to the loose sense common in nontechnical contexts are words with the same spelling ''or'' pronunciation, in which case all homophones are also homonyms.<ref>{{cite dictionary |title=Homonym |dictionary=Random House Unabridged Dictionary |url=http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/homonym?r=66 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304083418/http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/homonym?r=66 |archive-date=2016-03-04 |via=Dictionary.com}}</ref>
}}

Homophones that are spelled differently are also called '''heterographs''', e.g. ''to'', ''too'', and ''two''.