Homonym

A more restrictive and technical definition requires that homonyms be simultaneously homographs and homophones[1]—that is, they have identical spelling and pronunciation but different meanings.

A distinction is sometimes made between true homonyms, which are unrelated in origin, such as skate (glide on ice) and skate (the fish), and polysemous homonyms, or polysemes, which have a shared origin, such as mouth (of a river) and mouth (of an animal).

Additionally, the adjective homonymous can be used wherever two items share the same name,[4][5] independent of how closely they are related in terms of their meaning or etymology.

The word homonym comes from the Greek ὁμώνυμος (homonymos), meaning "having the same name,"[6] compounded from ὁμός (homos) "common, same, similar"[7] and ὄνομα (onoma) "name.

This leads to a species of informal fallacy of thought and argument called by the latin name equivocation.