7 ms·

English Multinyms

64 points by myroon5 2y ago

DannyB2 2y ago
For: call, caul, col Wot about: cawl ?
- DannyB2 2y ago
  Another one from my list that is missing is: Cents Scents Sense Since
  - DannyB2 2y ago
    Data: Captain, the censors have detected incoming copyright infringement notices. Riker: Shields up!
- DannyB2 2y ago
  Are we not going to count: Gnu Knew New
- DannyB2 2y ago
  Kneel Neal Neil Knight Night Nite Knot Naught Not Lager, Lauger (a last name), Logger Macs Mac's Macks Maks Max Tends Tens Tins Threw Through Thru Ware Wear (clothing), Wear (diminished by use) We're Where Your You're Yore
- DannyB2 2y ago
  boar, Boer, boor, bore How about adding: Bohr
- DannyB2 2y ago
  For this one: cense, cents, scents, sense Please add: Since
- DannyB2 2y ago
  Peaking Peeking Peking
sparsely 2y ago
Some of these have different pronunciation (depending on accent?), e.g. parish vs perish
- ealexhudson 2y ago
  Within UK dialect there would be some significant differences in many of these words, even ignoring the meddle/mettle examples - farrow/pharaoh is easily distinguishable, too. I would say, though, that to people _outside_ the dialect, there may be many more words that are indistinguishable. Listening to Scots speakers requires a lot more effort for me because to my ears, many of the differences in the words are extremely subtle.
  - ralferoo 2y ago
    "farrow"/"pharaoh" is more than easily distnguishable - to me, the first vowel in these are nowhere even close to the same - I use "a" from "apple" for "farrow" and "ai" from "air" for pharoah, along with a contrast in vowel lengths, again like "apple" and "air". EDIT: interesting grammar note - as a native speaker, I can't even decide if that should be "first vowel in these is" or "first vowels in these are" or what I actually wrote above which is what seems more natural to me, although immediately stood out to me as grammatically inconsistent when I re-read it after posting...
    - bradrn 2y ago
      > as a native speaker, I can't even decide if that should be "first vowel in these is" or "first vowels in these are" or what I actually wrote above which is what seems more natural to me, although immediately stood out to me as grammatically inconsistent when I re-read it after posting... I would say that the former (“first vowel in these is”) is ‘more correct’, but it sounds weird because it contains the plural “these” immediately before the singular “is”. What you actually wrote is inconsistent strictly speaking, but it feels better because the verb agrees with the immediately preceding word. (This kind of thing is rather common in languages with agreement.)
  - nmstoker 2y ago
tgv 2y ago
Multinyms, so words with multiple pronounciations/names? Anyway, I'm not a native speaker, but e.g. air, are, e'er, ere, err, heir does not sound identical to me. The Oxford English Dictionary says: ɛː, ɑː/ə, ɛː, ɛː, əː, ɛː, which makes are and err different. Unfortunately, the author doesn't give a source, so it's probably just his dialect?
- randallsquared 2y ago
  The "are" listed is "a metric unit of measure, equal to 100 square meters", not a conjugation of "be". Google pronounces it like "air".
  - timerol 2y ago
    It's 1/100th of a hectare, and pronounced like the "are" in "hectare".
- ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
  I'm a native English speaker (UK) and I'd pronounce some of those words differently. Certainly "air" and "are" sound very different. "e'er" would sound slightly different as it's spoken almost like two syllables, though not quite. I'd also take issue with "sick" and "Sikh" as Sikh has a slightly different vowel sound - somewhat longer than the short "i" in sic/sick. I'd say that "Sikh" and "seek" are homonyms. Further down the list, I've just spotted "taught, taut, tot" and "tot" doesn't belong there.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - bdsa 2y ago
    I also would have said "Sikh" and "seek" are homonyms until recently when I found out that Sikhs' preferred pronunciation is generally to sound closer to "sick" (aspirate the H if you like)
    - 2y ago
crustycoder 2y ago
Many of these are totally pants/panz/pænts
bilekas 2y ago
I've never heard of 'Multinyms' but I am right in thinking they're just homophones ?
- robobro 2y ago
  The first line of text after the title: > multinyms are examples of triple/quadruple/quintuple/sextuple homonyms. > According to some definitions, a homonym is a word with the same pronunciation as, but different meaning than, another word. Thus, homonyms come in pairs (at least). However, some remarkable homonyms come in triples, as you may here behold.
petesergeant 2y ago
I would add yaw/yore/your/you’re
- genewitch 2y ago
  That's that rhotal R in yaw? Like how I purposefully say "strawrberry"?
scottshambaugh 2y ago
Throw in regional accents and you’ll get many more! Aaron earned an iron urn: https://youtu.be/Esl_wOQDUeE?si=J34OmyDod7GHUrl1 https://youtu.be/Esl_wOQDUeE?si=J34OmyDod7GHUrl1
smckk 2y ago
Real eyes realize real lies.
yubiox 2y ago
I also maintain a list of these. Here are some I don't see there: greater grater grader baron barren bearing your cees, seas, sees, seize is missing cease grisly grizzly gristly pedal peddle petal I also put since with cense, cents, scents, sense steal steel still peal peel pill If you need help: Ewe mite higher too guise two bee yore assistance.
- chrisoverzero 2y ago
  Where are you from that you consider all of these groups to have the same pronunciation?
  - genewitch 2y ago
    Earth?
  - SilasX 2y ago
    In American English, terminal d's and t's usually sound the same unless the speaker takes deliberate care to enunciate them, so that would cover the greater and pedal cases.
  - yubiox 2y ago
    The criteria for my list is that they are taken from real life misspellings, mostly from facebook or youtube comments but also from news media. I have noticed that a lot of people don't bother to consider the proper spelling of words but rather they just spell a word however it sounds to them. So apparently some people pronounce these words the same. Feel free to make your own list of multinyms that fit your own criteria.
    - happytoexplain 2y ago
      Hmm, that seems to stray from the general definition of "multinym" as used in the OP. If we did stick with the idea of pronunciation, some of the examples from your list could be included if we allow regional accents, e.g. steel-still, peel-pill. However, those accents would also include many other sets not in the OP. barren-bearing particularly stands out, because I can't think of any accent that pushes those together audibly.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
amichal 2y ago
This reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffal... Edit: It's not on the list because its using multiple meanings of the same spelling...
- SamBam 2y ago
  The list is precisely words with multiple meanings of the same spelling, but there are only two meanings of "buffalo" that aren't proper names, and this list is about words with three or more meanings. (As an aside, I've always felt that you can have unlimited "buffalos" in a sentence, without ever using the name of the city, through a process of recursion, but I'm not enough of an authority to get my version into the Wikipedia article...)
  - amichal 2y ago
    Yeah, not a candidate for the list. I thought it wasn't because the list was about > 2 different spellings that sound "identical" but mean different things. I agree with you and when I (a non-linguist) first learned about this it did occur to me that there was probably some infinite recursive version and it took *some* of the fun out of it. Its' still fun as is this list. I also suspect there are lots of good examples of whatever a word with multiple meanings with different parts of speech is called. So it should be possible to find...use many "Buffalo buffalo buffalo..."
    - bryanrasmussen 2y ago
      I prefer the Police version https://medium.com/luminasticity/grammatical-infinities-what-they-are-32ed7e37cc05 https://medium.com/luminasticity/grammatical-infinities-what...
      - SamBam 2y ago
        I'd argue that that post isn't quite correct. They say you can't always add one and have it be correct, I think you can. One word: "Police!" This is the odd-duck, you can have a one-word imperative statement telling you to police. Rule 1: We can always have a [Noun phrase] + [verb], the verb just says what the noun phrase does. Two words: "Police police." (Cops police) What do cops do? They police. Rule 2: Any time you have a [noun phrase] + [verb], you can add a direct object to the verb. Three words: "Police police police." Who do the cops police? They police other cops. Finally rule 3: Any time you have a [subject] + [verb] + [object] you can rearrange the object to make it the subject of a new sentence. In this case, the subject of the new sentence would be "Cops that other cops police." Or "Police (that) police police." In English, the "that" is not necessary (though it usually helps with clarity). For instance, we can say "Mice cats eat are usually the slow ones." Then apply rule 1, we can take any noun phrase and add a verb to it to describe what those entities do. ("Mice cats eat die.") So four words (Rule 3 + 1): "Police police police police." The cops that other cops police, themselves police. Five words, from rule 2, who do they police? "Police police police police police." Six words, from rules 3 + 1, rearrange and add a verb: "Police police police police police police." etc.
sandbach 2y ago
'Polynyms', surely. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarism_(linguistics) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarism_(linguistics)
walthamstow 2y ago
This is extremely dependent on dialect and accent, but they don't specify which one they're talking about. > borough, burro, burrow Nah, not 'round 'ere they ain't.
djoldman 2y ago
> Sextuplets: > air, are, e'er, ere, err, heir When does "are" sound like the rest?
- mmooss 2y ago
  It's a unit of measure, not a form of 'to be'. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43398196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43398196
- roryirvine 2y ago
  When referring to the metric unit of area - more commonly seen in the form "hectare". But this is all very dialect/accent-dependent. Personally, I'd put a bit of a glottal stop in the middle of "e'er", and would say the "err" more like it could be written as "irr", so that set would only be a quadruplet for me.
rahimnathwani 2y ago
Thanks to Warren Kinney for distinguishing the British pronunciation of "new" and "knew" I'm confused about this. I'm from London, and I say these two words exactly the same way.
- SamBam 2y ago
  I think in some places one is pronounced "noo" and one is "niew," although honestly I could see either one for either meaning.
singularity2001 2y ago
air, are, e'er, ere, err, heir I guess I need to go back to school because I pronounce some of them quite differently.

English Multinyms

64 points by myroon5 2y ago

DannyB2 2y ago

For: call, caul, col Wot about: cawl ?

DannyB2 2y ago
Another one from my list that is missing is: Cents Scents Sense Since
- DannyB2 2y ago
  Data: Captain, the censors have detected incoming copyright infringement notices. Riker: Shields up!
DannyB2 2y ago
Are we not going to count: Gnu Knew New
DannyB2 2y ago
Kneel Neal Neil Knight Night Nite Knot Naught Not Lager, Lauger (a last name), Logger Macs Mac's Macks Maks Max Tends Tens Tins Threw Through Thru Ware Wear (clothing), Wear (diminished by use) We're Where Your You're Yore
DannyB2 2y ago
boar, Boer, boor, bore How about adding: Bohr
DannyB2 2y ago
For this one: cense, cents, scents, sense Please add: Since
DannyB2 2y ago
Peaking Peeking Peking

sparsely 2y ago

Some of these have different pronunciation (depending on accent?), e.g. parish vs perish

ealexhudson 2y ago
Within UK dialect there would be some significant differences in many of these words, even ignoring the meddle/mettle examples - farrow/pharaoh is easily distinguishable, too. I would say, though, that to people _outside_ the dialect, there may be many more words that are indistinguishable. Listening to Scots speakers requires a lot more effort for me because to my ears, many of the differences in the words are extremely subtle.
- ralferoo 2y ago
  "farrow"/"pharaoh" is more than easily distnguishable - to me, the first vowel in these are nowhere even close to the same - I use "a" from "apple" for "farrow" and "ai" from "air" for pharoah, along with a contrast in vowel lengths, again like "apple" and "air". EDIT: interesting grammar note - as a native speaker, I can't even decide if that should be "first vowel in these is" or "first vowels in these are" or what I actually wrote above which is what seems more natural to me, although immediately stood out to me as grammatically inconsistent when I re-read it after posting...
  - bradrn 2y ago
    > as a native speaker, I can't even decide if that should be "first vowel in these is" or "first vowels in these are" or what I actually wrote above which is what seems more natural to me, although immediately stood out to me as grammatically inconsistent when I re-read it after posting... I would say that the former (“first vowel in these is”) is ‘more correct’, but it sounds weird because it contains the plural “these” immediately before the singular “is”. What you actually wrote is inconsistent strictly speaking, but it feels better because the verb agrees with the immediately preceding word. (This kind of thing is rather common in languages with agreement.)
- nmstoker 2y ago

tgv 2y ago

Multinyms, so words with multiple pronounciations/names? Anyway, I'm not a native speaker, but e.g. air, are, e'er, ere, err, heir does not sound identical to me. The Oxford English Dictionary says: ɛː, ɑː/ə, ɛː, ɛː, əː, ɛː, which makes are and err different. Unfortunately, the author doesn't give a source, so it's probably just his dialect?

randallsquared 2y ago
The "are" listed is "a metric unit of measure, equal to 100 square meters", not a conjugation of "be". Google pronounces it like "air".
- timerol 2y ago
  It's 1/100th of a hectare, and pronounced like the "are" in "hectare".
ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
I'm a native English speaker (UK) and I'd pronounce some of those words differently. Certainly "air" and "are" sound very different. "e'er" would sound slightly different as it's spoken almost like two syllables, though not quite. I'd also take issue with "sick" and "Sikh" as Sikh has a slightly different vowel sound - somewhat longer than the short "i" in sic/sick. I'd say that "Sikh" and "seek" are homonyms. Further down the list, I've just spotted "taught, taut, tot" and "tot" doesn't belong there.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- bdsa 2y ago
  I also would have said "Sikh" and "seek" are homonyms until recently when I found out that Sikhs' preferred pronunciation is generally to sound closer to "sick" (aspirate the H if you like)
  - 2y ago

crustycoder 2y ago

Many of these are totally pants/panz/pænts

bilekas 2y ago

I've never heard of 'Multinyms' but I am right in thinking they're just homophones ?

robobro 2y ago
The first line of text after the title: > multinyms are examples of triple/quadruple/quintuple/sextuple homonyms. > According to some definitions, a homonym is a word with the same pronunciation as, but different meaning than, another word. Thus, homonyms come in pairs (at least). However, some remarkable homonyms come in triples, as you may here behold.

petesergeant 2y ago

I would add yaw/yore/your/you’re

genewitch 2y ago
That's that rhotal R in yaw? Like how I purposefully say "strawrberry"?

scottshambaugh 2y ago

Throw in regional accents and you’ll get many more! Aaron earned an iron urn: https://youtu.be/Esl_wOQDUeE?si=J34OmyDod7GHUrl1 https://youtu.be/Esl_wOQDUeE?si=J34OmyDod7GHUrl1

smckk 2y ago

Real eyes realize real lies.

yubiox 2y ago

I also maintain a list of these. Here are some I don't see there: greater grater grader baron barren bearing your cees, seas, sees, seize is missing cease grisly grizzly gristly pedal peddle petal I also put since with cense, cents, scents, sense steal steel still peal peel pill If you need help: Ewe mite higher too guise two bee yore assistance.

chrisoverzero 2y ago
Where are you from that you consider all of these groups to have the same pronunciation?
- genewitch 2y ago
  Earth?
- SilasX 2y ago
  In American English, terminal d's and t's usually sound the same unless the speaker takes deliberate care to enunciate them, so that would cover the greater and pedal cases.
- yubiox 2y ago
  The criteria for my list is that they are taken from real life misspellings, mostly from facebook or youtube comments but also from news media. I have noticed that a lot of people don't bother to consider the proper spelling of words but rather they just spell a word however it sounds to them. So apparently some people pronounce these words the same. Feel free to make your own list of multinyms that fit your own criteria.
  - happytoexplain 2y ago
    Hmm, that seems to stray from the general definition of "multinym" as used in the OP. If we did stick with the idea of pronunciation, some of the examples from your list could be included if we allow regional accents, e.g. steel-still, peel-pill. However, those accents would also include many other sets not in the OP. barren-bearing particularly stands out, because I can't think of any accent that pushes those together audibly.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

amichal 2y ago

This reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffal... Edit: It's not on the list because its using multiple meanings of the same spelling...

SamBam 2y ago
The list is precisely words with multiple meanings of the same spelling, but there are only two meanings of "buffalo" that aren't proper names, and this list is about words with three or more meanings. (As an aside, I've always felt that you can have unlimited "buffalos" in a sentence, without ever using the name of the city, through a process of recursion, but I'm not enough of an authority to get my version into the Wikipedia article...)
- amichal 2y ago
  Yeah, not a candidate for the list. I thought it wasn't because the list was about > 2 different spellings that sound "identical" but mean different things. I agree with you and when I (a non-linguist) first learned about this it did occur to me that there was probably some infinite recursive version and it took *some* of the fun out of it. Its' still fun as is this list. I also suspect there are lots of good examples of whatever a word with multiple meanings with different parts of speech is called. So it should be possible to find...use many "Buffalo buffalo buffalo..."
  - bryanrasmussen 2y ago
    I prefer the Police version https://medium.com/luminasticity/grammatical-infinities-what-they-are-32ed7e37cc05 https://medium.com/luminasticity/grammatical-infinities-what...
    - SamBam 2y ago
      I'd argue that that post isn't quite correct. They say you can't always add one and have it be correct, I think you can. One word: "Police!" This is the odd-duck, you can have a one-word imperative statement telling you to police. Rule 1: We can always have a [Noun phrase] + [verb], the verb just says what the noun phrase does. Two words: "Police police." (Cops police) What do cops do? They police. Rule 2: Any time you have a [noun phrase] + [verb], you can add a direct object to the verb. Three words: "Police police police." Who do the cops police? They police other cops. Finally rule 3: Any time you have a [subject] + [verb] + [object] you can rearrange the object to make it the subject of a new sentence. In this case, the subject of the new sentence would be "Cops that other cops police." Or "Police (that) police police." In English, the "that" is not necessary (though it usually helps with clarity). For instance, we can say "Mice cats eat are usually the slow ones." Then apply rule 1, we can take any noun phrase and add a verb to it to describe what those entities do. ("Mice cats eat die.") So four words (Rule 3 + 1): "Police police police police." The cops that other cops police, themselves police. Five words, from rule 2, who do they police? "Police police police police police." Six words, from rules 3 + 1, rearrange and add a verb: "Police police police police police police." etc.

sandbach 2y ago

'Polynyms', surely. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarism_(linguistics) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarism_(linguistics)

walthamstow 2y ago

This is extremely dependent on dialect and accent, but they don't specify which one they're talking about. > borough, burro, burrow Nah, not 'round 'ere they ain't.

djoldman 2y ago

> Sextuplets: > air, are, e'er, ere, err, heir When does "are" sound like the rest?

mmooss 2y ago
It's a unit of measure, not a form of 'to be'. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43398196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43398196
roryirvine 2y ago
When referring to the metric unit of area - more commonly seen in the form "hectare". But this is all very dialect/accent-dependent. Personally, I'd put a bit of a glottal stop in the middle of "e'er", and would say the "err" more like it could be written as "irr", so that set would only be a quadruplet for me.

rahimnathwani 2y ago

Thanks to Warren Kinney for distinguishing the British pronunciation of "new" and "knew" I'm confused about this. I'm from London, and I say these two words exactly the same way.

SamBam 2y ago
I think in some places one is pronounced "noo" and one is "niew," although honestly I could see either one for either meaning.

singularity2001 2y ago

air, are, e'er, ere, err, heir I guess I need to go back to school because I pronounce some of them quite differently.