Day 17: Homonyms, homophones, and homographs

A homophone is a word that's pronounced the same as another word but which has a different meaning to that word, a homograph is a word with the same spelling as another word but a different meaning, and a homonym is a word with both the same spelling and the same pronunciation as another word but with a different meaning. There're also heterographs, i.e. words with different spellings and meanings but the same pronunciation, and heteronyms, which are words with the same spelling but different meanings and pronunciations. Words can fit into more than one of these categories.

I'm going to re-write that in a simpler form because they're far too similar:

Homophone - same pronunciation, different meaning
Homograph - same spelling, different meaning
Homonym - same pronunciation and spelling, different meaning
Heterograph - same pronunciation, different spelling and meaning
Heteronym - same spelling, different meaning and pronunciation

If it helps, think of phone being sound and therefore pronunciation and graph being visual and therefore spelling (for the homo words).

An example of a homonym is "fluke", which can be used to describe a lucky event, a flatworm, the ends of an anchor, or the fin on a whale's tail. This is, of course, both a homograph and a homophone as well.

Homophones (also heterographs):

• Aisle, I'll, isle 
• There, their, they're 
• Toad, toed, towed

 Homographs (also heteronyms):

• Bear (the animal and the verb meaning to withstand)
• Sow (female pig and the verb to plant seeds)

 There are a great deal more examples of this, but that's the basics. Thanks to Bryan for suggesting this as a topic -- I've not studied homophones, etc. for years and they're still interesting!