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.