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Definition 2024


oronym

oronym

English

Noun

oronym (plural oronyms)

Examples

"I scream" / "ice cream"
"that's tough" / "that stuff"
"four candles" / "fork handles"

  1. A word or phrase that sounds the same as another word or phrase.
    • 2008, Paul McFedries, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Weird Word Origins, page 101:
      An oronym that comes from mishearing the lyrics of a song is most often called a mondegreen.
    • 2010, Andrew Nevins, Locality in Vowel Harmony, page 203:
      Vowel harmony may serve the purpose of parsing the morphosyntactic words in phrases (i.e., oronym avoidance).
    • 2012, Rod L. Evans, Tyrannosaurus Lex, chapter 14:
      The comedian Jeff Foxworthy often uses oronyms in his Appalachian comedy routine, as when he uses a sentence with moustache: "I moustache [must ask] you a question."
  2. The toponym of a mountain

See also