Paronym

This article does not cite any references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2009)

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

A word that is related to another word and derives from the same root, e.g. a cognate word;
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

Paronym

See also