heteronym
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of heteronym
From the Late Greek word heterṓnymos, dating back to 1880–85. See hetero-, -onym
Explanation
Heteronyms are words that look the same but have different sounds and meanings. See if you can spot the heteronyms in this sentence: "She got a bull's eye with her bow and arrow, then took a triumphant bow." Heteronym is derived from the Greek heteros, "different," and onoma, "name." English is full of these confusing words, which language learners have to deduce from their context. "Don't stand too close while I close the door." Close, meaning "near," and close, meaning "shut," are heteronyms. "When I tear my favorite jeans, I shed a tear or two." Tear, meaning "rip," and tear, the drop that slides down your cheek when you're sad, are heteronyms, too.
Vocabulary lists containing heteronym
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
“Countless lives inhabit us,” his heteronym Ricardo Reis proclaims atop the poem “I’m Missing,” a paean to multivalence: “I’m more than one. / It’s too fun for me.”
From New York Times ● Nov. 30, 2021
Thanks to John Ficarra for the present in his May 16 Sunday Opinion essay, “How I wound up with a wound from heteronyms,” of a new word to add to my vocabulary: heteronym.
From Washington Post ● May 28, 2021
I remember once when a heteronym caused me much amusement.
From Washington Post ● May 28, 2021
He spent a lifetime exploring the multiplicity of his inner self this way, using a literary idea he called heteronym to write in many styles as different people with rich backstories.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 15, 2016
Each heteronym was given a biography, psychology, politics, religion, even physical description, and the main characters were interconnected.
From The Guardian ● Dec. 4, 2010
These works were penned by Pessoa’s heteronyms, a term he came up with to describe the scores of distinct authorial entities he invented.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 30, 2026
Hannaham was reading Fernando Pessoa, the great modernist who inhabited a multiplicity of voices he called heteronyms — some 70-plus personae that were simultaneously aspects of himself and whole-cloth creations.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 22, 2021
This was particularly true of a writer like Pessoa, who actively played with various identities, sometimes allowing his heteronyms to correspond and criticize each other.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 23, 2021
He was a whole galaxy of writers — heteronyms, as he called them, with entirely different personalities and different, often radically conflicting, views on poetry, style, nature, politics and the antique.
From New York Times ● Jul. 13, 2021
In a trunk of more than 25,000 pages of manuscript discovered after he died were writings by nearly 80 people, or "heteronyms", created in Pessoa's lifetime.
From The Guardian ● Dec. 4, 2010
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
