Paronym

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A paronym or paronyme in linguistics may refer to two different things:

1. A word that is related to another word and derives from the same root, e.g. a cognate word;
2. Words which are almost homonyms, but have slight differences in spelling or pronunciation and have different meanings.

Some paronyms are truly synonymous, but only under the rarest of conditions. They often lead to confusion. Examples of any type of paronym are:

• alternately and alternatively
• collision and collusion
• conjuncture and conjecture
• excise and exercise
• prolepsis and proslepsis
• continuous and contiguous
• farther (or farthest) and further (or furthest)
• affect and effect
• upmost and utmost
• deprecate and depreciate

[edit] See also

Look up paronym in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• -onym
• Cognate
• Doublet (linguistics)
• Paronymic attraction