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English Multinyms

English Multinyms

19 comments

·March 14, 2025

yubiox

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

Where are you from that you consider all of these groups to have the same pronunciation?

bilekas

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

robobro

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.

scottshambaugh

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

tgv

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

The "are" listed is "a metric unit of measure, equal to 100 square meters", not a conjugation of "be". Google pronounces it like "air".

ndsipa_pomu

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.

bdsa

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)

ndsipa_pomu

To be fair I don't know any Sikhs, though there is a Sikh community where I live (there's a Sikh temple at the bottom of my road).

I'm going to listen out for how Sikhs pronounce it.

null

[deleted]

smckk

Real eyes realize real lies.

sparsely

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

ealexhudson

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.

oneeyedpigeon

Some of them are in multiple languages, which surely violates the principle?

Annatar01

Yeah for sure, i think if i use homonyms close to each other i might even try to emphasize the difference. For /ˈparɪʃ/ and /ˈpɛrɪʃ/ its definitely an accent thing.

cjs_ac

Other examples:

* borough, burrow

* call, caul, col

* knot, naught, not

* sic, sick, Sikh

* sics, Sikhs, six

* taught, taut, tot

* cinque, sink

* dew, do

* mall, moll, maul, mawl

crustycoder

Many of these are totally pants/panz/pænts

petesergeant

I would add yaw/yore/your/you’re