Paronym

Not to be confused with Patronym.

"Paronymous" redirects here. For the butterfly genus, see Paronymus.

Paronyms are near-homophones ("soundalike"), near-homographs ("lookalike") and/or near-cognates ("meanalike") — words that are similar but not identical in pronunciation, spelling, and/or lexical meaning — which may cause confusion in their understanding (reception) and usage (production).[1] Paronymy is the relationship between a pair of words or phrases which are similar or partially identical in spelling, pronunciation and/or meaning.[1]

In the discussion of semantic analysis, the term paronym can also be used in a narrower sense to refer to words that are derived from the same root, i.e. cognate words.[2][3]

Examples

English

Examples of English paronyms include:

• alternately and alternatively
• authoritative and authoritarian
• collision and collusion
• conjuncture and conjecture
• eclipse and ellipse
• excise and exercise
• prolepsis and proslepsis
• continuous and contiguous
• affect and effect
• upmost and utmost
• deprecate and depreciate
• recurring and re-occuring
• paronym and patronym

See also

• -onym
• Eggcorn
• Heteronym (linguistics)
• Paronymic attraction
• Word ladder

References

1. R.R.K.Hartmann; Gregory James (2002), Dictionary of Lexicography, Routledge, p. 106
2. "paronym". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
3. David Crystal (2008), A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics (6th ed.), Blackwell publishers, p. 351