For my NPL friends....

[rhu]

Over Shabbat, we discovered an apt heteronym. By definition, it contains TETCNBN. Damn. (Maybe I should save it for April?)

Comments

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

The APT... modifier (including "anagram" as shorthand for APT TRANSPOSAL) is used for flats where both parts of the base have to be dictionary phrases. That is, you can't do a consonantcy on "Ice-T, yo yo yo I act yo" (to borrow one from Con), because the latter isn't a phrase, but it can be used as an apt consonantcy by printing the latter phrase as a clue for the former.

Heteronyms, though, need not be phrases at all (I had G Nat versify one on something like "inevitably, the; in Evita, Blythe"). So an "apt heteronym" is just a heteronym, really. Might as well write it as such.

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

What I found was a word with multiple main entries in 11C and with distinct etymologies; furthermore, two of the entries had overlapping senses, such that one sense of one entry could be used as a definition clue for one sense of the other entry.

Sure, it could be written up as an ordinary heteronym (even an overlapping one), but what I'm agog at is the idea that (unless I misunderstand my tagging, which is quite possible) such a thing as an "apt heteronym" exists even if it can never be used because of the TETCNBNness of the flat type.

[ertchin.livejournal.com]

To give the example/old saw that came to mind when I saw your entry, this would be something like:

APT HETERONYM (3 4)

NO, THERE

... right?

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Or like the other example/old saw that came to my mind,

INAPT HETERONYM (6)

CLEAVE