Homophone


 * This article is about the term in linguistics, for other meanings, see Homophony (disambiguation).

A homophone is a word which is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning, for example: carat, caret, and carrot. Homophones may be spelled differently, but the term also applies to different words that sound the same and are also spelled identically, such as "rose" (flower) and "rose" (past tense of "rise"). However the more precise term for the latter class of words is homonym. Neither of these words should be confused with homosexual or homophobe. The term may also be used to apply to units shorter than words, such as letters or group of letters which are pronounced the same as another letter or group of letters.

Homophones and homonyms are often used to create puns, deceive the reader (as in crossword puzzles) or to suggest multiple meanings. The last usage is common in poetry and creative literature. An example of this is seen in Dylan Thomas' radio play "Under Milk Wood": "The shops in mourning" where 'mourning' can be heard as 'mourning' or 'morning'. Another vivid example is Thomas Hood's poem "Faithless Sally Brown":


 * His death, which happen'd in his berth,
 * At forty-odd befell:
 * They went and told the sexton, and
 * The sexton toll'd the bell.

The first homophones that one learns in English are probably the homophones to, too, and two, but the sentence "Too much to do in two days" would confuse no one. (Note, however, when read with a natural rhythm in many dialects, to has a schwa and is not homophonous with too or two.)
 * There, their, and they're are familiar examples, as are lead (the metal) and led (the verb past participle).
 * Moped (the motorized bicycle) and moped (the past tense of mope) are examples of homographs; they are not homophones, because they are pronounced differently.

In some accents, various sounds have merged in that they are no longer distinctive, and thus words that differ only by those sounds in an accent that maintains the distinction (a minimal pair) are homophonous in the accent with the merger. Some examples from English are:-
 * pin and pen in many southern American accents.
 * merry, marry, and Mary in many western American accents.
 * The pairs do, due and forward, foreword are homophonous in most American accents but not in most British accents.
 * The pairs talk, torque, and court, caught are distinguished in rhotic accents such as Scottish English and most dialects of American English, but are homophones in many non-rhotic accents such as British Received Pronunciation.

Homophones are sometimes used in message encryption to increase the difficulty in cracking the decryption code. In this case the clear text is altered prior to being encrypted and the decrypting party substitutes the homophones for their true meaning after decrypting the message

Many puns rely on homophones for their humor.

A comic strip that utilizes homophones, as a visual example, is Silent Kimbly.

Example list of homophones

 * bare, bear
 * berth, birth
 * brake, break
 * carat, caret, carrot
 * ewe, you
 * eye, I
 * fare, fair
 * flower, flour
 * know, no
 * knew, new
 * meat, meet
 * principal, principle
 * their, there, they're
 * to, too, two
 * told, tolled
 * hete, hate
 * see, sea
 * right, write
 * hole, whole
 * lone, loan
 * days, daze
 * stationary, stationery
 * red, read (past tense: /rĕd/)
 * be, bee
 * scent, cent
 * wood, would

For a complete list of homophones refer to the following Wiktionary appendices.
 * List of dialect-independent homophones
 * List of dialect-dependent homophones