homonymy [Grk ónyma (=ónoma) ‘name’]

A type of lexical ambiguity involving two or more different words: Homonymous expressions are phonologically ( homophony) and orthographically ( homography) identical but have different meanings and often distinct etymological origins, e.g. found (‘establish’ or ‘cast’), kitty (‘fund’ or ‘cat’), scour (‘polish’ or ‘search'). Occasionally, homonyms have a common etymological origin, e.g. meter (‘unit of length’ or ‘instrument used to measure’). The etymological criterion is generally problematic, since the point of divergence from a common etymological origin is often unclear. Homonymy is traditionally distinguished from polysemy in that a polysemic expression has several closely related variations in its meaning, e.g. green (‘fresh,’ ‘inexperienced,’ and ‘raw’, among others), while the meanings of homonymous expressions have no apparent semantic relation to one another.