homophone
/ˈhɑməfoʊn/noun
homophone is a noun meaning “A word which is pronounced the same as another word but differs in spelling or meaning or origin” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled H-O-M-O-P-H-O-N-E and has 3 syllables, and it appears about once in every 13 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of homophone is homophones.
What does homophone mean?
noun
- 1
A word which is pronounced the same as another word but differs in spelling or meaning or origin.
- 2
A letter or group of letters which are pronounced the same as another letter or group of letters.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce homophone?
- UK /ˈhɒməfəʊn/
- US /ˈhɑməfoʊn/
- Australia /ˈhɔməfəʉn/
Homophone has 3 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-homophone.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of homophone
- homophones plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is homophone?
Homophone appears about once in every 13 million words in written English, the 110,368th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Words people confuse with homophone
Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).
Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).
Homophone in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense words with the same pronunciation:
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does homophone come from?
From French homophone; equivalent to homo- (“same”) + -phone (“sound”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).