Homonyms are the words, different in meaning and either identical

both in sound and spelling or identical only in spelling or sound, for

example ball as a round object used in game, and ball as a gathering
of people for dancing.

The most widely accepted classification of them is as following:

1. homonyms proper (or perfect homonyms);

2. homophones;

3. homographs.

Proper homonyms (perfect homonyms) are words identical both in

spelling and in sound-form but different in meaning, for
example, case – ‘something that has happened’ and case – ‘a box, a
container’.

Homophones are words identical in sound-form but different both

in spelling and in meaning: scent, cent – sent, son – sun, father –
farther, discreet (благоразумный) – discrete (дискретный), for –
fore (нос корабля).

Homographs are words identical in spelling but different both in

their sound-form and meaning: tear [tiә] – ‘a drop of water that
comes from the eyes’, tear [tεә] – ‘to pull apart by force’; row [rευ]
– ‘an arrangement of persons or things in a line’, row [rаυ] – ‘a
noisy quarrel or dispute’.

The traditional classification is far from being a perfect one as it

doesn’t take into consideration the part of speech words belong to
Professor A.I. Smirnitsky classified homonyms into two large
classes with respect to part of speech status of words: 1) full
homonyms; 2) partial homonyms.

I. Full homonyms – words which represent the same part of speech

category and have the same paradigm, e.g. match – ‘a game, a
contest’ and ‘a short piece of wood used for producing fire’; pit ‘a
large, usually deep opening in the ground’ and chiefly US and
Canadian ‘the stone of a cherry, plum, etc’, key ‘a metal instrument
to fit a lock’ and ‘a small low island or bank composed of sand and
 coral fragments’. The difference is confined to the lexical meaning
only.

II. Partial homonyms – words which coincide in some of their

forms, but have different paradigms. There are three groups of
them.

1. Partial lexical homonyms are words which belong to the same

part of speech, are identical in form but differ in lexical meaning
and paradigms. E.g. to lie (lay, lain):: to lie (lied, lied); to
hang (hung, hung):: to hang (hanged, hanged).

Lexico-grammatical homonyms are words which belong to

different parts of speech and differ in lexical meaning and
grammatical meanings.

Paronyms are words that are pronounced or written in a similar

way but which have different lexical meanings. Paronyms contrast
with homonyms, which are words with different meaning having
the same pronunciation or spelling. Examples of paronyms include:

 alternately and alternatively

 collision and collusion
 conjuncture and conjecture
 excise and exercise
 prolepsis and proslepsis
 continuous and contiguous
 affect and effect
 upmost and utmost
 deprecate and defecate
 paronym and paronorm

Some paronyms are truly synonymous, but only under the rarest of
conditions. They often lead to confusion.