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| - In linguistics, a homonym is, in the strict sense, one of a group of words that share the same spelling and pronunciation but may have different meanings. Thus homonyms 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 state of being a homonym is called homonymy.
Examples
stalk1: part of a plant
stalk2: follow/harass a person
further: left, skate, etc.
Allthough it is not always very clear, a distinction is sometimes made between “true” homonyms, which are unrelated in origin and polysemous homonyms, or polysemes, which have a shared origin.
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