Ordinance & Ordnance

With the i – a rule or law.

Without the i – military weapons and ammunition.

Stationary & Stationery

-ary – unmoving, unchanging.

-ery – paper and other writing materials, often personalized. 

"The nice stationery I was supposed to use as thank-you cards when I graduated high school sat stationary in a drawer for many years."

I'm not alone in the universe!

http://learnyourdamnhomophones.com/

Role & Roll

What can I say? Indiana Jones is a great role in a great movie. I won't apologize for coming back to him again and again on this blog. :) 

Of course, if you prefer your rolls hot and buttery, we can do that too:

Mucous & Mucus

In honor of the last four weeks of sickness around our house.
Mucous – (adj.) describing the cells and tissues that produce mucus.
Mucus – (n.) the slime produced by mucous cells and tissues. Often ending up in a tissue, come to think of it.
This one shouldn't be too hard to remember because -ous is such an obvious adjective suffix, as in "viscous," "infectious,"or, well, "obvious." So even if we can't remember the correct spelling, hopefully we can remember the part of speech we're talking about, can't we?

Pair, Pare, Payer, Pear

Pair – two objects.
Pare – cut the peel off, or cut into small slices.
Payer – person who pays.
Pear – world's most overrated fruit.

Brake & Break

Remember the difference. Very, very important.

Afterward & Afterword

-ard – (adv.) time as it extends beyond the end of an event.
-ord – (n.) writing as it extends beyond the end of a story.

Golf & Gulf

What did the square root of sixteen shout while playing golf? "Four!"

An interesting side note on this one: the flags that mark the holes in golf are rectangular – but when people draw them for cartoons or whatever, they're ALWAYS triangular. Seriously, google "golf flag." Every photo that comes up will show a rectangular flag, but every cartoon/illustration will be a triangle. It's bizarre.

Iraq

Homophones, Weakly's first guest blogger! Harrison, my six-year-old partner in homophony, submitted not only a suggestion, but his very own drawing based on the complicated situation of listening to people pronounce the word Iraq. Is it "eh-" or "eye-," "-rack" or "-rock"? There are lots of possible combinations (not to mention quite a few meanings for "rack" – ahem), so I appreciate the help in sorting it out, Harrison. And I enjoyed reinterpreting your drawings in the HW style.

Arc & Ark

Couldn't make up my mind which pair of drawings to post today. On the one hand, I like the similarity of shapes in this one:

On the other hand, any excuse to run this one again is good enough for me:

Bare & Bear

I like this one; a set of homophones that includes three different parts of speech and a pair of homonyms!
Bare – (adj. / v.) uncovered / to uncover.
Bear – (n.) a type of large carnivorous animal. / (v.) to carry.

Avert & Overt

Avert – INDY: Shut your eyes, Marion. Don't look at it no matter what happens.
Overt – BELLOQ: It's beautiful!
Everything about this scene – from the intense power of the Ark, to face-melting Nazis – was totally overt. But Indy and Marion averted their eyes and missed the whole thing.

And no comments about Indy's outfit, please. :) I know he wasn't wearing his usual get-up during this scene; I just wanted to make it obvious who was tied up there, so I went with the iconic hat and whip.

A parent & Apparent

Venturing into new territory today with a word whose homophone is made of two separate words. I know what you're thinking – from here it's only a short, slippery slope to "'scuse me while I kiss this guy." So I promise I'll tread carefully (though I may have to do that one some day; it's too hard to pass up the opportunity to draw a pictograph version of Jimi).

I hope their books don't get wet.

It's satisfyingly ironic that I found this photo caption in an article about academic proficiency. Homophones-as-typo strike again!

Muscle & Mussel

Pistil & Pistol

-il – the ovule/seed-producing reproductive organ of a flower. Named for its resemblance to a pestle.
-ol – handgun; though sometimes defined as a subset of handguns in which the chamber and barrel are integrated into a single unit. Of course, if you find someone willing to nitpick this point with you, that's probably a discussion you should back slowly away from.

Discussed & Disgust

Funny how often these two go hand-in-hand (I'm looking at you, Republican debates).

plurals

Ordinarily, I wouldn't dedicate a new post to plural forms of homophones I've already drawn. Hairs/hares just isn't different enough from hair/hare. Why bother?
Well, I'll tell you why bother! Because there are special occasions where those plural forms become homophones of an extra word that didn't appear in the original group. Exciting!
So if you pluralize last week's nouns T/tea/tee, they're not that interesting on their own. But! But! They suddenly gain a fourth companion (like a bloated Doctor Who episode), and get to hang out with a verb: "tease."

Likewise, cent/scent/sent from a few weeks back is interesting because although "sent" can't be pluralized, if you pluralize "cent" and "scent" they become homophones of "sense."

Now we just need a homophone for "senses" and we can continue the pattern. But don't think I'll stoop to using "census."
Although... then we could do "censuses"....
No! No more! This post is over!

T, tea, tee

T time.