  To take an easy example without philosophical significance, bank is homonymous in ‘Socrates and Alcibiades had a picnic on the bank’ and ‘Socrates and Alcibiades opened a joint account at the bank.’  This case is illustrative, if uninteresting, because the accounts of bank in these occurrences have nothing whatsoever in common. Part of the philosophical  interest in Aristotle’s account of homonymy resides in its allowing partial overlap. Matters become more interesting if we examine whether—to use an illustration well suited to Aristotle’s purposes but left largely unexplored by him—conscious is synonymous across ‘Charlene was conscious of some awkwardness created by her remarks’ and ‘Higher vertebrates, unlike mollusks, are conscious.’  In these instances, the situation with respect to synonymy or homonymy is perhaps not immediately clear, and so requires reflection and philosophical investigation. 