homophony

Also found in: Thesaurus, Encyclopedia, Wikipedia.

ho·moph·o·ny

(hō-mŏf′ə-nē)

n. pl. ho·moph·o·nies

1. The quality or condition of being homophonic.

2. Homophonic music.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

homophony

(hɒˈmɒfənɪ)

1. (Linguistics) the linguistic phenomenon whereby words of different origins become identical in pronunciation

2. (Music, other) part music composed in a homophonic style

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

ho•moph•o•ny

(həˈmɒf ə ni, hoʊ-)

n.

1. homophonic music.

2. the quality or state of being homophonous.

[1770–80; < Greek]

homophony

1. music in which one voice carries the melody, sometimes with a ehord accompaniment.
2. Obsolete, unison. Also called monody, monophony. — homophonous, adj.

See also: Sound

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Switch to new thesaurus

Noun	1.	homophony - the same pronunciation for words of different origins pronunciation - the manner in which someone utters a word; "they are always correcting my pronunciation"
	2.	homophony - part music with one dominant voice (in a homophonic style) part music - vocal music for several voices in independent parts (usually performed without accompaniment)

Mentioned in ?

References in classic literature ?

Mnemic homophony gives us, without the addition of other processes of thought, a picture of our friend X which is in a certain sense abstract, not the concrete in any one situation, but X cut loose from any particular point of time.

In addition to external observable habits (including the habit of words), there is also the generic image produced by the superposition, or, in Semon's phrase, homophony, of a number of similar perceptions.

View in context

Their associated melodies have become the backbone of a great deal of other music, from the homophony of Lucas Oslander to the polychoralism of Michael Praetorius, from the cantatas and organ preludes of Johann Sebastian Bach to the motets and organ pieces of Hugo Distler, from Felix Mendelssohn's exploration of Luther's Ein feste Burg in his Reformation Symphony to Igor Stravinsky's somewhat sparse reworking of the same melody in his L'histoire du soldat, among other examples.

MARTIN LUTHER HYMNS

(12) Homophony is the composition with a predominant voice and the other accompanying it.

The silent sound of the stone: the sculpture of the "Three Holy Hierarchs" Monastery of Iasi

(NCP, 146) The rhyme of "out" and "yella-yite" (a Scots word which, as Matthew Francis points out, traditionally indicates a "yellowhammer" bird, but Graham takes to mean an "insulting expression meaning cowardly") asserts the Scots character of the voice in the pronunciation of "yite," strengthening the homophony with "out" at the very point that the speaking subject's "intention" is brought into question, undermining the fact that we are to make these words our own (NF, 139).

"Nostalgia of a form": W.S. Graham's Self-Conscious Ballads

Apparently, a small minority of people on purpose confuse the two words democracy and ochlocracy, merely because of their homophony.

The 'little parrots'

John Fekete's (1977) wordplay, in which McLuhan and his epigones are described as "McLuhanatics," would have been significant to McLuhan, for whom homophony was not just an arbitrary coincidence of forms (Marchand, 1989, p.

Bringing the Mountain to the Prophet: Marshall McLuhan's Mythology in the Anthropocene

However, there might have been yet another reason which narrrowed down the use of the term, notably, its complete or close homophony with the lexeme saum ~ soum ~ saam 'corner', which is widely used in the Veps language.

Areal distribution of veps topographical vocabulary

Thematic transformation is also given due focus, with contrapuntal devices of interruptio, hyperbole, and trilletto serving ultimately to morph Baroque polyphony into galant homophony. Bohemian lands also enjoyed the string quartet's success, albeit limited to private homes or religious orders and their monasteries; Michaela Freemanova's contribution explores the extant repertoires contained in the Brothers Hospitallers' Brno (Brunn) and Kuks (East Bohemia) collections, as well as that of Johann Anton Seydl and the Lobkowicz family of Central Bohemia.

The String Quartet: From the Private to the Public Sphere

Finally, in this sketchy overview of (some of) the main problems of WFR, a couple of words about a phenomenon which has been relatively little studied by linguists: I mean the formations that French linguists call 'mots-valises' (literally 'suitcase-words') which are formed via fusion of two words that present partial homophony such as motel from motor-h(ot)el, or even just a blending of two words such as eurovision from Europe and television, Franglais from francais + anglais or Spanglish from Spanish + English.