Tautonym
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A binomial name consisting of the same word twice, such as Bison bison.
"And that would mean a species named Leucanthemum leucanthemum, with the genus and species epithet the same (a tautonym), which is a total no-no in botany."
- 2 A word or term made from two identical parts or syllables, such as bonbon or dada.
"The chapter on reduplication - "flip-flopping higgledy- piggledy through the riffraff" - differentiates rhyming compounds like bigwig, hotshot, ragtag, sci-fi from repetitions called tautonyms, such as bye-bye, so-so, rah-rah, as well as from ricochet words in which the repeated element is modified: chit-chat, roly-poly, shilly-shally."
- 3 An absolute synonym.
Example
More examples"And that would mean a species named Leucanthemum leucanthemum, with the genus and species epithet the same (a tautonym), which is a total no-no in botany."
Etymology
From taut- + -onym or alternatively tauto- + -nym.
Related phrases
More for "tautonym"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.