English Homophones
DirectionsName the sets of English homophones – words which are spelled differently and have different meanings, but have the same pronouncation. Groups of homophones are sorted by the first word in each group alphabetically. Words then sorted within each group A-Z. Parts of speech such as plurals, past participles, gerunds, etc are not included if the root word is already listed UNLESS a third new word is a homophone in the group created by the other part of speech. Only sets of words in which each word is on the TWL06 word list (a widely-used Scrabble word list) are included, so in general proper nouns are not included. Group # shown along with number of words in that group.
caught, court ?
Three and Free (?)
also aerie/airy
affect/effect (I pronounce the verb of the former and the noun of the latter the same — YMMV), addition/edition.
in what dialect are put and putt homophonous?
Fort / Fought should be there surely?
i left out the ‘r’ words (there were a number) – a judgment call.
Err? with air and heir. I know some rhyme it with prefer, but “air” is considered a valid pronunciation by my dictionary.
When I finish, the hardest/missed don’t appear.
fixing the hardest/missed.
A quiz like this is highly dependent on dialect, and a lot of people distinguish the vowel in “err” (or “merry”) from that in “air” (or “Mary”).
I imagine that a bunch of homophones that I’m not finding are because of regional accent differences, i.e. ant/aunt are homophones to me while cot/caught are not, but it’s the opposite for my cousins who grew up in a different state. However, there were some that I was surprised not to find, like banned/band, ate/eight, do with dew/due. Is this a case of regional differences that I am unaware of?
i suspect the source didn’t have *every* single homophone on it…i know contractions i left out as they are not on the TWL06 word list. and yes some are judgment calls with pronounciation. i will add the ones people mentioned here that weren’t included.
There were a few others missing—some because of the nature of the source (so, “can’t” and “cant”, or “why” and “Y”), but there were a few others I expected to be there but didn’t find (and now can’t remember, sigh).
Close and clothes don’t seem to be there. Also don and dawn didn’t work. Or maybe I’m mixed up.
In my accent, neither of those are homophones.
In mine, both are.