Key & Quay

I think this must set the record for homophones with the fewest letters in common!

Callous & Callus (Final post)

It's Homophones, Weakly's fifth anniversary today, and also its final day.
I've enjoyed this project immensely, as well as chatting with many of you about words-n-stuff over the years, but it's time for me to move on. I can't commit to weekly updates here anymore. I may revisit HW from time to time – after all, there are still plenty of homophones to get to. But I can't be your Sunday habit anymore...
Or can I?
I've been collecting lost/discarded shopping lists for years. (Shut up, it's not weird! And I'm not the only one who does it!) But it's finally time for me to do something with them! Starting today, I'll be blogging one list every week, accompanied by an illustration of the person I imagine wrote it. It's called Shoppers Unknown, and I'll be trying it out on Tumblr as well here on Blogger. I'll have links to it from Twitter, Facebook, and Ello as usual, too. (Jeez, suddenly this sounds like a lot of work...)
Anyway, the point is I'll still be drawing something for you every Sunday! I'll just be posting it over at Shoppers Unknown. I hope to see you there!
And here's our final pair of homophones, Callous & Callus, which pays tribute to HW's very first post on 3/6/2011.
-ous – (adj.) Mean, uncaring.
-us – (n.) Hard patch of toughened skin.

Bough & Bow

-ough – tree branch.
-ow – (v.) bend formally at the waist. (n.) the front end of a ship.
But remember not to confuse these kinds of bows with these kinds of bows!

Currant & Current

With an A – a type of berry.
With an E – (n) a flow of water or electricity. (adj.) belonging to the present time.

Stair & Stare

Why did the celebrity have a private elevator installed? Because they didn't like the stares.

C, Sea, See

Sail & Sale

Breach & Breech

With an A – (v.) break through from one area into another.
With an E – (n.) hind section of an object or animal.

Tide & Tied

Creak & Creek

ea – a small, irritating noise.

ee – a small, soothing river.
I might have too much going on in the Creek picture, there. Don't be surprised if I think on it some more and change it one of these days. I feel like it needs the human for scale (so you can tell it's not as big as a river), and the bridge implies permanence (so it's not someone standing beside a puddle). But I don't know, it doesn't quite look right to me. But an aerial view of a river wouldn't work either... I don't know. It is what it is... for now. :)

Beach & Beech

As in, "You may have noticed there was no post last week. Instead, I took a lake-y, forest-y vacation."

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.

Wade & Weighed

I'll be surprised if I Wade through my emails tomorrow and no one has Weighed in on the fact that I've basically used the same drawing of the scale for two weeks in a row... :)

Fairy & Ferry

Dedicated to my son, who is more than a little obsessed with magical creatures AND public transit.

Peer & Pier

Peer – (n.) comrade, companion, a person of similar status to another.  (v.) stare intently and/or secretly.
Pier – (n.) walkway extending out over water, supported by posts.

Aisle, I'll, Isle – 100th post!

For some reason, I decided to celebrate Homophones, Weakly's 100th post by stranding two newlyweds on a deserted island. Don't read too much into that, OK?
Aisle – narrow path between two obstructions such as seats in a theater or shelves in a market.
I'll – contraction for "I will."
Isle – small island.

Knot & Not

With a K – the hard mass of wood where a branch met the trunk of a tree. Or, the hard mass where a piece or pieces of cord are intertwined. Or, a measure of nautical speed equal to one mile per hour.
Without a K – an adverb used to negate the phrase that it modifies.

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:

Rose & Rows

This week a pair of homophones, both of which are also pairs of homonyms. So for each word we have two separate definitions.
Rose –
(n.) the flower which by any other name, I've read somewhere would smell the same.
(v.) past tense of rise.
Rows –
(n.) plural form of row: objects arranged more or less in a straight line.
(v.) third person singular present tense (or something like that) of row: to propel a boat with an oar.

PS, Please no horticulturalists nitpicking the rose plants, OK?

fan male & to air is human

I recently received this email that just totally made my day. The sender said it was OK to share it with you:
I just wanted to tell you that I very much appreciate your homophones weakly blog. I discovered it while I was looking for decorations for a birthday party. I work with an elderly woman and every year for her birthday we have a homophone bee (although, to be fair, she calls them homonyms. I can't blame her, I think that is what they taught in schools in the 20s and 30s). This year was her 90th birthday and I made prints of your pictures for her and her great grandchildren. English is the children's second language and they are too young to read, so the images really helped. I have never met a person more interested in homophones than this lady. Thank you for blogging something of interest to us. 

And then they went through and highlighted all the words that have homophones – that's dedication! :)

Anyway, I just want to thank everyone for reading this blog every week. It's fun for me, so it's nice to hear that you like it too.

But at the same time, I'm embarrassed to announce that I made a mistake a few months back with Road & Rode. Somehow I left out Rowed. (Seems like every time that pesky biker shows up, he needs three panels.) So here is the corrected image. Not much different, really. But I'm sure we'll all sleep a little bit better tonight now, won't we?