I'm enjoying reading Deaf Sentence by David Lodge, which I mentioned in yesterday's post, but apart from the enjoyment, I'm also learning a lot. Like what a homophene is, for instance. Yes, that's homophene with an e, not homophone, although if you google it, Google will assume you mean homophone (a word pronounced the same as another, but with a different meaning - like rain, rein and reign) and show you those results.
A homophene is defined by the OED as "a word that looks the same as another during vocal articulation" and they are described by Lodge as "words which look alike on the lips but have a different meaning, like mark, park and bark, or white, right and quite". Other homophenes would be fail/veil, din/tin and sap/zap.
The prefix homo- is from the Greek meaning 'the same'. The -phone of homophone is from the Greek for 'sound', and the -phene of homophene is from the Greek meaning 'to show' or 'to appear'.
I learnt something today - homophene and its meaning. thank you for sharing this info. Guess what? I'm sharing this to my little sister too and she was amazed!
Posted by: air compressor | December 29, 2011 at 12:53 PM