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In Japanese, 熱い and 暑い are both read atsui and both mean 'hot'. The former pertains to an object (e.g. hot coffee) and the latter to weather.

In French 'cuissot' and 'cuisseau' have the same pronunciation and essentially the same meaning. Both come from 'cuisse' (thigh). The former applies to venison and the latter to veal.

Is there a name for these?

Are there different terms for when a language has two ways to spell a sound vs. two ways to pronounce a spelling? calls them 'different spellings', but I am asking about genuinely different words, not variants of spelling of a given word.

Mathieu Bouville
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  • Huh, interesting. Linguistics generally consider spoken language to be primary, which means for the Japanese example those are the exact same word, probably not even different senses. – curiousdannii Jun 14 '20 at 12:35
  • Re: your French examples. Based on your explanation, those are most likely to be just orthographic variants or doublets. – Alex B. Jun 14 '20 at 12:58
  • I don't think there's a term that captures the fact that the spellings are not interchangeable. I haven't come across 'doublets' but I would take that term to mean the same thing as orthographic variants or different spellings, i.e. that there is more than one valid spelling and the writer has a choice. – rchivers Jun 14 '20 at 13:10
  • I don't know French enough but wiki says "Le cuissot (orthographe classique) ou cuisseau (orthographe réformée de 1990)", cf. https://dictionnaire.lerobert.com/definition/cuissot#definitions (where they are treated as orthographic variants) – Alex B. Jun 14 '20 at 15:15
  • cf. "Cuisseau désigne la partie du veau dépecé, du dessous de la queue du rognon, tandis que cuissot désigne la cuisse du gros gibier (cuissot de cerf, de chevreuil, de sanglier). Cette subtilité était l’un des pièges de la fameuse dictée de Mérimée. Mais les deux graphies cuissot et cuisseau sont maintenant acceptées pour parler du gibier." https://www.facebook.com/EditionsRobert/posts/333687553344440/ – Alex B. Jun 14 '20 at 15:18
  • @rchivers doublets or etymological doublets is a commonly used term, see e.g. Bloomer 1998 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00393279808588214 or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublet_(linguistics) Typically, doublets are not homophones though. – Alex B. Jun 14 '20 at 15:23
  • @AlexB. Thanks. If les deux graphies cuissot et cuisseau sont maintenant acceptées pour parler du gibier, then absolutely they are orthographic variants, but I got the impression that for the OP, it had to be cuissot, and that that was part of the Q. Could well be wrong though. – rchivers Jun 14 '20 at 16:11
  • @rchivers well, for those L1 French speakers who make a distinction between cuissot and cuisseau such words would be paronyms. – Alex B. Jun 14 '20 at 16:58
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    In Japanese, this is called 同音異字 (dô-on iji), meaning "same sound, different character". The use of different characters is caused by different vocabulary in the source language of the writing system (i.e. Chinese) – devio Jun 15 '20 at 07:00
  • This may be found in English in some (American) writers' use of theater vs theatre. I write "theatre" when referring to the medium and "theater" for the building it takes place in. – Nardog Jun 15 '20 at 17:23
  • I'm sure there's one in British English as well. It's been on the tip of my tongue since I first saw this post. There is a convention that the spelling judgment is used for a legal judgment, even in publications that usually prefer judgement, but I'm sure there's a better example than that - it just won't come to me. – rchivers Jun 15 '20 at 19:37

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