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homophony

ho·moph·o·ny/həˈmɑfəni/noun

homophony is a noun meaning “A musical texture in which two or more parts move together in harmony, the relationship between them creating chords; the quality of being homophonic” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled H-O-M-O-P-H-O-N-Y and has 4 syllables (ho·moph·o·ny), and it appears about once in every 55 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of homophony is homophonies.

What does homophony mean?

noun

  1. 1

    A musical texture in which two or more parts move together in harmony, the relationship between them creating chords; the quality of being homophonic.

  2. 2

    The quality of being homophonous.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce homophony?

  • UK /həˈmɒfəni/
  • US /həˈmɑfəni/

Homophony has 4 syllables, split ho·moph·o·ny in writing.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-homophony.oga, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of homophony

  • homophonies plural

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is homophony?

Homophony appears about once in every 55 million words in written English, the 231,291st 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).

Homophony in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense musical texture:

LanguageWords
Frenchhomophonie
Portuguesehomofonia
Spanishhomofonía

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 homophony come from?

Internationalism, from French homophonie, from Ancient Greek ὁμοφωνία (homophōnía, “unison”), from ὁμόφωνος (homóphōnos, “of the same sound or tone”). By surface analysis, homo- + -phony.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).