Vocabulary — The Onyms

The Onym family is one few of us can say that we have never been a little confused by or never tripped on when verbally groping for the right one.

This hub is designed to define them and make them easier to remember.

One of the best ways of understanding and remembering words is to break them into their prefixes and suffixes. Here all the words we are dealing with end in onym = word or name, so the prefixes are what is important.

According to Dictionary.com an acronym is "a word formed from the initial letters or groups of letters of words in a set phrase or series of words..."

Examples are Wac = Women's Army Corp. Opec = Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Prefix: Acro = Top, tip, high

Here the prefix acro meaning top, tip, indicates that the acronym is made up of the top or first letters of the words in the phrase the acronym refers to.

An antonym is a word that has the opposite or nearly the opposite meaning to another specified word. The word big is an antonym of small, sad is an antonym of happy, and so on.

ant or anti = against, opposite.

An antagonym is a word that can be its own opposite. It is also known as contranym, antilogy, autoantonym, enantiodrome. An example is cleave, which can mean cling together or to separate.

Antagonyms on the Internet:

Antagonym Page

A capitonym is a word that changes its meaning when capitalised. More often than not such words are proper nouns when capitalised, and they sometimes change their pronuciation as well.

For example nice, meaning pleasant, when capitalised is Nice, a city in France; or job, a form of employment, becomes Job, a character in the Bible.

A heteronym is a word that is spelled the same way as another, but that has a different pronunciation and meaning. For example, lead, to conduct, and lead, the metal. Others are bow and row.

hetero- or heter- = other, different.

Heteronyms on the Internet:

Welcome to the Heteronym Homepage!

The American Heritage Dictionary, defines a homonym as "One of two or more words that have the same sound and often the same spelling but differ in meaning, such as bank (embankment) and bank (place where money is kept)."

Another example would be bear (the animal) and bear (to carry).

An oronym is a string of words that sounds the same as another string: ice cream and I scream is an example.

Because the oronym occurs in speech the prefix or = oral is used.

The polyonym is an object that has many names or terms.

poly = many

The synonym is a word that has the same or very nearly the same meaning as another specified word. Big is a synonym of large.

syn = together