homophony
/həˈmɑfəni/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.26 in modern English
22
Scrabble Score
9
Letters
4
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A musical texture in which two or more parts move together in harmony, the relationship between them creating chords; the quality of being homophonic.
Countable; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "On the other hand, it seems to be the fact that well-bred Englishmen do not say "it's him" or it's her." The formula is: "It's he"; "it's she"; "it's me." The homophony doubtless accounts for the anomaly in the case of "me.""
- "Full of gently lapping lines, close imitation and moments of honeyed homophony, all underpinned by tactful percussion, it is startlingly different from the driving, hard edges of much of Lang's work with the Bang On a Can collective."
- "There is, for example, the homophony of "merry" and "Mary," which typifies the South Midland accent common in the hill country of east Tennessee and upper Georgia."
- "I'd like to point out a few inaccuracies in your article on Joost, where I work (What is Joost all about, January 18). One, it's pronounced more like "juiced". Whether the homophony is deliberate only Janus and Niklas know."
- "This is the third puzzle with a theme that plays on the homophony between the word “sea” and the letter C to come across my desk in recent months, but I’m tickled every time."
Etymology
Internationalism, from French homophonie, from Ancient Greek ὁμοφωνία (homophōnía, “unison”), from ὁμόφωνος (homóphōnos, “of the same sound or tone”). By surface analysis, homo- + -phony.
Origin
- Source language: French
Word Breakdown
- Root: homophonie, ὁμοφωνία
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /həˈmɑfəni/
- British English: /həˈmɒfəni/
Usage
Inflected Forms
Derived Forms
homophonist