homophonous
/həˈmɒfənəs/adjective
homophonous is an adjective meaning “Having the same pronunciation” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled H-O-M-O-P-H-O-N-O-U-S, and it appears about once in every 49 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does homophonous mean?
adjective
- 1
Having the same pronunciation.
"Cot" and "caught" are homophonous in some American accents, as are "there" and "they're".
- 2
Homophonic; sounding the same.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce homophonous?
- UK /həˈmɒfənəs/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-homophonous.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
How common is homophonous?
Homophonous appears about once in every 49 million words in written English, the 217,360th 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).
Homophonous in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense having the same pronunciation:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| German | gleichlautend, gleichklingend, homofon |
| Portuguese | homófono |
| Spanish | homófono |
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 homophonous come from?
Adapted borrowing of Ancient Greek ὁμόφωνος (homóphōnos) + -ous. By surface analysis, homo- + -phonous.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).