language question re: IDNs

Cary Karp ck at nic.museum
Wed Oct 7 15:13:17 CEST 2009


Quoting Michael:

> OED does not have homoglyph. It has homograph, in a very short 
> definition:
> ...
>     2. Philol. A word of the same spelling as another, but of
> different origin and meaning.
>
> 1873 F. HALL Mod. Eng. 170 Homographs, identical to the eye; as base,
> bore, dun, fair..in their various senses.

Homography is used here as a property of words -- by definition things 
that are not random concatenations of elements of different scripts. When 
the term was nonetheless widely expropriated to designate domain name 
labels that were multi-script strings, it became necessary to find a more 
precise way to denote the purely graphemic concern.

/Cary


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