Homophone
A homophone is a word that sounds exactly like another. 'Meat', referring to flesh, sounds exactly like 'meet', meaning 'come together'.
When homophones have the same spelling, they are also homonyms: the modal verb 'will' as in 'will they ever come?' sounds and also looks exactly like the noun 'will' as in 'having a strong will' or 'last will and testament'.
Words with the same spelling are called homographs, but they are not all homophones: some have different pronunciations, and are heteronyms, as for example the verb 'to tear', meaning 'to rip', and 'tear', as in 'tearful'.[1] Thus homonyms are homophonic homographs.
Some examples in English
- C's/seas/sees/seise/seize
Some words sound the same in some forms of speech but not others. For example:
In most American speech:
- balm/bomb
In the speech of many Americans:
- rider/writer
In most of England:
- awe/or (emphatic pronunciation)/oar/ore
- pause/paws/pores/pours
In various parts of England:
- fin/thin/thing
- hill/ill
- put/putt
- Shaw/shore/sure
References
- ↑ In the notation used at English spellings, téar rip and têar cry (cf. tén and têen)