Homonyms are words different in meaning but identical in sound or spelling, or both in sound and spelling. E.g.: bank, n. – a shore; bank, n. – an institution for receiving, lending, exchanging money. The traditional approach is based on historical criteria. Lexemes with the same form but different origin are treated as homonyms and presented in separate entries: Ball, n. – a sphere, any spherical body. Ball n. – as “round object” has the Germanic origin; ball, n. – a large dancing party. Ball n. – as “dance” is of Romance origin. The term “homonym” is derived from Greek homos – “similar” and onoma – “name”, and thus expresses the sameness of name combined with the difference in meaning. Homonymy exists in many languages, but in English it is particularly frequent, especially among monosyllabic words. In the list of 2540 homonyms given in the “Oxford English Dictionary” 89% are monosyllabic words and only 9.1 % are words of two syllables. From the viewpoint of their morphological structure, they are mostly one-morpheme words. Homonyms can appear in the language not only as the result of the split of polysemy, but also as the result of leveling of grammar infl exions, when different parts of speech become identical in their outer aspect, e.g. «care» from «caru» and «care» from «carian». They can be also formed by means of conversion, e.g. «to slim» from «slim», «to water» from «water». They can be formed with the help of the same suffi x from the same stem, e.g. «reader» /a person who reads and a book for reading/.

Homonyms can also appear in the language accidentally, when two words coincide in their development, e.g. two native words can coincide in their outer aspects: «to bear» from «beran» /to carry/ and «bear» from «bera» /an animal/. A native word and a borrowing can coincide in their outer aspects, e.g. «fair» from Latin «feria» and «fair» from native «fager» /blond/. Two borrowings can coincide, e.g. «base» from the French «base» /Latin basis/ and «base» /low/ from the Latin «bas» /Italian «basso»/. Homonyms can develop through shortening of different words, e.g. «cab» from «cabriolet», «cabbage», «cabin».