Paronyms are near-homophones ("soundalike"), near-homographs ("lookalike") and/or near-cognates ("meanalike") — words that are similar but not identical in pronunciation, spelling, and/or lexical meaning — which may cause confusion in their understanding (reception) and usage (production).
[1] Paronymy is the relationship between a pair of words or phrases which are similar or partially identical in spelling, pronunciation and/or meaning.
[1] In the discussion of semantic analysis, the term paronym can also be used in a narrower sense to refer to words that are derived from the same root, i.e. cognate words.
[2][3] Examples of English paronyms include: This linguistic morphology article is a stub.
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