noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   A character identical or nearly identical in appearance to another, but which differs in the meaning it represents; thus, in character encoding terms, a character with an identical or near-identical glyph, or the glyph itself.

   "The homoglyphs I (uppercase i) and l (lowercase L) confused many who typed in the URL."

Example

More examples

"The homoglyphs I (uppercase i) and l (lowercase L) confused many who typed in the URL."

Etymology

First attested in 1938; formed as homo- (“same”) + glyph after homograph.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.