n. a word used in the entertainment industry to
mean a respectful reference or tribute to someone or something else in the industry; for example, a remake film might make an hommage to the original.
The word is pronounced "
oe-MAZH". Originally the word was
one and the same as homage (pronounced "OM-ij" or "HOM-ij"), but filmmakers started thinking this word ("homage") was borrowed from French (which it is not), and wanted to
sound sophisticated or more accurate, so they started pronouncing it as though it were French. When the
people tasked with writing things down realized you couldn't spell the sound "oe-MAZH" as "homage", they wisely decided to use the French version of the word ("hommage"), and thus filmmakers avoided scathing ridicule for not knowing how to pronounce an honest
English word.