*-nyms

[jack]

Is there a word that collectively refers to homonyms and homophones, etc, and if possible also pseudonyms :) other than "homonym"?

Is there a word that refers to words typed with the same letters on a phone keypad, like "me" and "of" and "dtaj" and "fuck"[1]?

I propose:

Telenym.
Phononym.
Buttononym.

The second is a pun on homophone[2]. The last should have a greek -- or at least foreign -- word for button or keypad instead. Can you suggests a good stem there? Or any other suggestions?

Is there an equivalent of pseudonym, nom-de-plume, anonym, pseudogyny, acronym or cognomen for an online name, handle, tag, screenname, and username?

Pseudonym nearly covers it, but a pseudonym is often (though by no means necessarily) anonymous. Can we revive cognomen, please? Or coin a new word. The list at the end are fine as words, but I find them insufficient because they don't have "nym" in as all names should :)

[1] I really love this new form of bowdlerisation. Phononym will also refer to words *formed* this way, such as "book" meaning "cool" and the swearwords produced!

[2] Are universal definition of homonym, etc? Wikipedia says:

Homograph -- Words spelled the same and different in meaning. ()
Homophone -- Words pronounced the same but different in meaning
Homonym -- One or more of the above. Some people say restricted to having a different root[3].
Heteronym -- annoyingly, nearly a subset of homonym! :)

But makes it clear many people/dictionaries changes those 'or's to 'ands', add restrictions that the words must be the same or different in spelling/pronunciation/meaning/root as well.

Do linguists have any standard use, or official use and colloquial use, or can I go on using wikipedia's definitions which fit with my conception, and occasionally say things like "A true homonym" for a homonym with different spelling and pronunciation, or perhaps for one with truly different roots?

[3] Or at least different route from the same original root :)

Hmm, my formatting is odd, but we'll live with it.

Comments

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

Historical linguists are mainly interested in homophones (same pronunciation, different meaning and root (and perhaps different spelling)) rather than homographs (same spelling, different meaning and root (and perhaps different pronunciation)) because the relative recency of standard spelling in most languages makes the spoken form much more relevant to language change. Homophone and homonym are thus often used interchangeably in linguistics texts I'm familiar with, and I would use them like that myself when writing a linguistics text. I would find it odd for someone to talk of "true" homonyms as being something else (and did you actually mean a homonym with different spelling and pronunciation? In what sense would it be homonymous?). But I wouldn't use the term homonym to refer to polysemous words like poll in its meanings of "head" and "vote-count" (among others) because there's a single root within English there.

One of my favourite homonyms (in this case both homophonous and homographic) is cleave, with virtually opposite meanings of "divide, cut" and "adhere, cling". As it happens, there are two distinct roots involved here; the words would have been pronounced differently in Old English, and had (and still have to some extent) different inflections (compare clove, cloven with cleaved/cleft!).

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

That's about what I figured, thank you very much.

did you actually mean a homonym with different spelling and pronunciation?

Doh! No, sorry, I think I meant with exactly one of those, and also etymologically unrelated.

One of my favourite homonyms (in this case both homophonous and homographic) is cleave,

Oh yes, they're great. I was sure I've posted links to pages of contranyms on my journal before now, haven't I?

Distinct roots -- yes, that's interesting. Do you mean the old english words came from completely different sources, or were different evolutions of an original foreign word before that? Some contranyms seem to converge by pure coincidence (or a tendency to drift together words with similar meanings), but some seem to go the amazingly common volte-face[1] in meaning words often undergo. I can't decide which is more entertaining.

[1] Is there a term for that?

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

Do you mean the old english words came from completely different sources, or were different evolutions of an original foreign word before that?

They are native Old English words, inherited from Proto-Germanic, inherited from Proto-Indo-European - and the roots are distinct as far back as we can reconstruct! "Cleave" meaning "stick to" comes from a PIE root something like *gleibh- while "cleave" meaning "divide" comes from a root like *gleubh-. Other Germanic languages, ancient and modern, have distinct forms resulting from these roots too.

[rochvelleth.livejournal.com]

cleave... As it happens, there are two distinct roots involved here...

Can I ask what the exact OE roots are please? I'll probably just go and forget them, but right now I'm feeling knowledge thirsty :)

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

Sure :-) The "dividing" one is from OE cle:ofan (I'm using a colon instead of a macron there) which was a Class 2 strong verb (i.e. with principal parts cle:ofan - cle:af - clufon - clofen) cognate with ON klju:fa. The "adhering" one is from OE clifian/cli:fan which were two variants of the same root, producing in OE a weak verb (i.e. with dental suffix in the past tense forms) and a Class 1 strong verb (with parts cli:fan - cla:f - clifon - clifen) respectively, cognate with ON kli:fa.

[rochvelleth.livejournal.com]

Ooh, thank you!