This week’s theme
Words about words and language

This week’s words
endonym
basilect
metonymy
homeoteleuton
heterophemy

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(ho-mee-o-TEL-yuh-ton)

MEANING:

noun: A repetition of the same or similar endings in a sequence of words.

ETYMOLOGY:

From homeo- (similar) from Greek homoio + -teleutos, from teleute (end). Earliest documented use: 1592.

NOTES:

The word also refers to a form of scribal error where a copyist’s eye skips to a word with the same ending one or more lines below where they were.

USAGE:

“Fittingly, the poem rhymes abab, although the ‘b’ rhyme in the first stanza is more homeoteleuton than true rhyme.”
Al Benthall; Worlds of Eye and Ear in the Poems of William Harmon; The Mississippi Quarterly; Jan 2004.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: