Bold & Bowled

Tell me honestly, would an image of the starship Enterprise have been better on the left?

Borough, Burro, Burrow

Inextricably linked to New York, I'm sure you could carry the accent for Borough far enough that it would be a homophone for Borrow instead. But this grouping suits my midwestern ears better.

Son & Sun

I suppose I should have posted this on my son's birthday. Damn, looks like I won't win Father of the Year this year either. Sigh. So let's just say today's post is in honor of finally getting some warm weather around here. I love you, sun.

Cereal & Serial

As in, "These Lucky Charms are too cold, these Lucky Charms are too hot, but these Lucky Charms are juuuuuust right."

Hear & Here

Foul & Fowl

With a U – disgusting.
With a W – delicious.

Ceiling & Sealing

As in, "I could spend the weekend sealing the cracks in my ceiling, but I'd rather binge-watch Sherlock."

Pray & Prey

Do I dare make a snarky comment about religion here?
No, I do not. Look, a snake!

Groan & Grown

As in, "You can moan and groan all you want, but the grass needs to be mown because it has grown too long."
See what I did there?

Taught & Taut

With the gh – (v.) past tense of Teach.
Without the gh – (adj.) stretched tightly.
As in, "I just taught you what taut means."

Moan & Mown

As in, "You can complain all you want, but you still have to cut the grass. Now get out there."
–my dad, circa 1993.
–my wife, circa 2003.
–me, circa 2013.

Shone & Shown

-one – past tense of Shine.
-own – past tense of Show.

Albumen & Albumin

-en – Yes, egg whites actually have a name.
-in – a protein found in, among other things, egg whites.
I'm sure this will come in very handy in your day-to-day writing...

Mandrel & Mandrill

-el – a tool component used to clamp moving parts of the tool itself or the item being worked upon.
-ill – a species of brightly colored primates, the largest of the monkeys.

Mantel & Mantle

-el – A covering, often decorative, surrounding a fireplace. A great place to hang socks full of chocolate.

-le – This one has a lot of definitions, including: the layer of the earth between the core and the crust, and apparently some kind of cape-like cloak. But it's also a verb that describes the very act of cloaking something or concealing it. So, technically, you mantle your fireplace with a mantel. So that's not confusing at all.

Happy holidays!

And, for the sports fans:

Board & Bored

As in, "I just can't concentrate on this meeting."


As in, "I put a hole through this plank."

Desert & Dessert

This pair of words is a little more complicated than most here at HW, because half the time they aren't homophones at all. Desert has two distinct definitions and pronunciations, only one of which is pronounced like Dessert (de-ZURT). So, technically, we have three words here: two of which have the same spelling but different pronunciations (homographs), and a third that is a homophone of one of the homographs. Sheesh, sorry about that. Anyway, you can see that no matter which definition you intend, it's always a challenge making sure it's spelled correctly.
The trick I was taught to remember is that Dessert has two Ss instead of one because it's the only one you want MORE of. But this trick only holds up until you've eaten pumpkin pie, at which point the sentence "I wish I could desert this dessert in the desert" leaps to mind.

Heroin & Heroine

What a difference a silent E makes.

Bolder & Boulder

An old post gets a second life! (I'm either bolder than usual this week, or lazier.)

Locks & Lox

Locks – chambers for raising and lowering ships to different levels of a waterway. Or devices used to secure a storage container. (Notice these are plural nouns. But "locks" is also a present tense verb form for using a lock.)

Lox – brined salmon. (Notice this is a singular noun, and I don't believe it has a plural form. Lox can be measured in plural amounts or pieces or varieties, etc. But as far as I can tell you can't have "loxes." I could be wrong here, of course.)

As in, "The captain locks the lox in a box using locks, until the ship is through the locks." A perfectly logical sentence.
By the way, I would have posted this earlier in the day, honestly, but I started drawing and then was like, "oh my god I have to go buy some bagels and lox right now." #soimpressionable

Also, please note I didn't include the word "lochs," because although it's fairly common in certain English usage (well, pretty much "Loch Ness monster" and nothing else), the word isn't actually English. So I didn't include it. Anyway, it's Gaelic for "lake."