paronym

[Greek parōnumon, from neuter sing. of parōnumos, derivative. See paronymous.]

Expression used in Aristotle for terms that do not signify substances directly, but only indirectly, by picking out accidental qualities belonging to the substances. ‘Colour’ and ‘justice’ signify qualities, but ‘coloured’ and ‘just’ describe things by means of these qualities, and are therefore paronyms, indicating substances derivatively.

A word derived from or related to another word; also, the form in one language for a word in another, as in the English canal for the Latin canalis.

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A paronym or paronyme in linguistics may refer to two different things:

1. A word that is related to another word and derives from the same root, e.g. a cognate word;
2. Words which are almost homonyms, but have slight differences in spelling or pronunciation and have different meanings.

Some paronyms are truly synonymous, but only under the rarest of conditions. They often lead to confusion. Examples of any type of paronym are:

• alternately and alternatively
• collision and collusion
• conjuncture and conjecture
• excise and exercise
• prolepsis and proslepsis
• continuous and contiguous
• farther (or farthest) and further (or furthest)
• affect and effect
• upmost and utmost
• deprecate and depreciate

See also

Look up paronym in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• -onym
• Cognate
• Paronymic attraction

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