Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Call for Homonyms

I like homonyms--words that sound the same but are spelled differently and have different meanings. Some examples:

here/hear
one/won
by/buy
son/sun
hair/hare
to/two/too
wood/would
four/for/fore (for all you golfers)
be/bee
effect/affect

We have a lot of them in English, and I write them down whenever I hear them. Here are some interesting ones I have collected recently:

pie/pi
feet/feat
great/grate
night/knight
all/awl
no/know
new/knew

Now to the advanced section:

mustard/mustered
wholly/holy/holey
foray/4A/Faure (accent aigu)
Riley/wryly/Reilly
Gemini/Jim and I (in certain dialects)
flour/flower (ditto)
toad/towed/toed
load/lode/lowed
wrapped/rapt
moose/mousse
wave/waive
sight/site/cite
so/sew/sow
lieu/loo (British)/Lou
air/ere/Eyre



Please feel free to send in your own homonyms, or to dispute the ones I have listed here.

5 Comments:

Blogger CESL said...

is there any such thing as a heteronym?

10:05 PM  
Blogger Lynne Davis said...

Sure: olive/fruitcake

7:27 PM  
Blogger Diva4Jesus said...

Ate/eight

6:57 PM  
Blogger Diva4Jesus said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

7:00 PM  
Blogger Diva4Jesus said...

Lassie/Lassi. First is the iconic collie: the second is an Indian yogurt drink.

7:01 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home