homonymous
adjective
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The "ambiguous" sense of homonymous refers mainly to words that have two or more meanings. Logicians and scientists who wanted to refer to (or complain about) such equivocal words chose a name for them based on Latin and Greek, from Greek hom- ("same") and onyma ("name"). In time, English speakers came up with another sense of homonymous referring to two things having the same name (Hawaii, the state, and Hawaii, the island, for example). Next came the use of homonymous to refer to homonyms, such as see and sea. There's also a zoological sense. Sheep and goats whose right horn spirals to the right and left horn spirals to the left are said to be homonymous.
Example Sentences
Rebecca Ann Hughes, Forbes, 28 May 2022 The European Commission also defended the application saying that similar-sounding or homonymous names were not an adequate reason for rejecting a request. Rebecca Ann Hughes, Forbes, 16 Sep. 2021 Etna is one of three active volcanoes in Italy, along with Stromboli on the homonymous island and Vesuvius near the southern city of Naples. Rebecca Ann Hughes, Forbes, 25 May 2021 Bardonecchia, near Turin, is a mountainous town, for example, while Pantelleria lies on the homonymous island off the coast of Sicily. Rebecca Ann Hughes, Forbes, 19 Mar. 2021 The country's most populous state, Sao Paulo, reported a record number of COVID-19 deaths for the second day running on Wednesday, even as its homonymous metropolis allowed shops to resume business and prepared to reopen its malls. Matthew Bodner, NBC News, 11 June 2020 This means the news of Iggy collaborating with homonymous problematic cohort Azealia Banks puts a limp punctuation mark on this stage of Iggy’s second record. Dale Eisinger, Billboard, 9 July 2017 See More Word History
Latin homonymus having the same name, from Greek homōnymos, from hom- + onyma, onoma name — more at name
1621, in the meaning defined at sense 1
Medical Definition
homonymous
adjective