The word "bark" can refer to a dog's sound or the outer layer of a tree. This is an example of ___.
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: C
Explanation
Correct Answer
homonym
Explanation
The question asks you to identify the linguistic term for a word that shares the exact same spelling and pronunciation as another word but has completely different meanings. The correct term is homonym.
The word "bark" perfectly demonstrates this concept. It can mean the sharp cry of a dog, or it can mean the tough protective outer covering of a woody plant root or stem. Because it is spelled the same, sounds the same, but possesses entirely unrelated definitions, it is classified as a homonym.
The other choices represent different types of word relationships that do not fit this description because a synonym is a word with a similar meaning, an antonym is a word with an opposite meaning, and a hypernym is a broad category word that contains more specific words (like "animal" is a hypernym for "dog").
Key Points
The word parts themselves tell you the definition where Homo- means same and -nym means name or word.
An easy way to distinguish these vocabulary terms for your exam is by remembering that homonyms have the same spelling and sound but different meanings, whereas synonyms have different spellings but the same meaning.