terminology - Is there a name for words which are pronounced differently depending on which definition is being used?


I was thinking about the word "fillet" recently.


When I teach high school freshmen about the word (in a machining/engineering context), they refuse to believe that it is pronounced "FILL-it," rather than "fill-A." Who can argue with McDonald's commercials for their Fillet-O-Fish sandwich?


I've finally learned to just have the Mirriam-Webster pronunciation cued up on my computer to start the lesson, and explain that the only time it's pronounced like the sandwich is when you are using it to discuss the "food-related" definition. Otherwise it's pronounced "the other way."


Are there other examples of words where the pronunciation depends on the specific definition being used? And is there a special name for words with this property?


The closest I can come up with is "read," but I think the two versions are considered two different words which happen to have the same spelling in that case.


E.g., "I can read the book," vs. "I have read the book."


According to the Mirriam-Webster online dictionary, there is only one word, but one of the usages has an alternate pronunciation"


"noun fil·let \ˈfi-lət, in sense 2b also fi-ˈlā, ˈfi-(ˌ)lā\"


To further clarify, if I have a "fillet of leather," it is pronounced using the standard pronunciation, yet if I have a "fillet of salmon," it is pronounced using the "food" pronunciation.



Thanks for the answer Ian and Greg. I'm still confused about the specifics of the word fillet as per the "thin strip of material" meaning, but I think I get what you're saying about how words being used with different definitions are, linguistically speaking, different words.



Answer



As Greg said in his comment, it is important to remember that they are different words even if they happen to share an English spelling. This should help you to come to the definition of what to call them.


These are called homographs that are heterophones. Derived from homo (same) -graph (write) and hetero (different) -phone (sound).



A homograph (from the Greek: ὁμός, homós, "same" and γράφω, gráphō, "write") is a word that shares the same written form as another word but has a different meaning. When spoken, the meanings may be distinguished by different pronunciations, in which case the words are also heteronyms.



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