A sequence of words that sounds identical (or nearly so) to a different sequence, creating ambiguity by the ear. Ice cream and I scream, a nice cold hour and an ice-cold hour. An oronym may be accidental where a pun is deliberate, meaning split by sound alone.

A modern linguistic formation built from Greek oron- "boundary, limit" (as in horizon) + -onym "name, word." A boundary in speech: where one listener's word-break becomes another's.