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.

Hair & Hare

This word pair surely marks one of the first times I became aware of homophones. (Although, I suppose, if I'm going to be honest, it was more likely "but"and "butt.") To this day, it's one of the first homophone pairs that springs to mind when someone asks for an example, right behind "bare" and "bear."
In fact, given my love of illustrating animals, I should compile all the animal homophones together sometime – hare, ant, moose, horse, bear, mussel, boar, deer, ewe/ewes, flea, gorilla, lynx. Gulp, I guess I've got my work cut out for me.
Any I'm missing? Jay? Hart? Oooh, I may have to go back and revise "rays." Dang.

Emigrate & Immigrate

OK, so, technically these aren't homophones. But they're close. And from time to time I do hear "emigrate" used where "immigrate" should be. (I'm looking at you, NPR.)
One never emigrates TO a place. One always emigrates FROM a place.












Ah, Paris. We all have dreams, don't we?

Carat, Caret, Carrot, Karat

Carat – a measure of weight used mainly for gemstones, equal to 200 mg.

Caret – a typographic mark shaped like an inverted V.

Carrot – a plant of the parsley family, or its edible root.

Karat – a measure of the percentage of gold in an alloy, equal to 4.1667%. (Though it is worth noting that outside the US, this spelling is not used. Instead, this AND the gemstone usage are both spelled "carat.")

Flour & Flower

Maybe we can call bakeries "flourist shops"?

Days & Daze

It's Christmas Eve. And since tomorrow I'll be unable to escape the primordial Land Without Internet, this week's post comes a day early. Consider it an early Christmas gift. Or your fifth Hanukkah gift. Or maybe we're just really late for Diwali.
At any rate, whatever you celebrate, happy holi-

Cent, Scent, Sent

Cent – (n.) a penny, one hundredth of a dollar.
Scent – (n.) a smell, an odor.
Sent – (v.) past tense of send.


*Images not to scale  :)

Ant & Aunt

Not to be confused. One communicates mainly by scent. And the other can lift many times its own body weight.

Capital & Capitol

With an A – refers to uppercase letters, an accumulation of available wealth (with some indecipherable Econ 101 definition, I'm sure), or a city which is the seat of a country's or state's government.

With an O – the building itself used by a country's or state's legislative officials.

And don't forget, Capitol must always be capitalized.

"I'm going to take all my capital out of the bank and spend it on a trip to our nation's capital, where I'll write an angrily misspelled protest sign in capital letters and hold it up in front of the Capitol."

Sighs & Size

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?

Beat & Beet

I have to admit I find the phrase "beat poets" very funny. What did poets ever do to you?? :)
But I think there's a market (pardon the pun) for "beet poets" out there, too.

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?

Lightening & Lightning

WITH an e – becoming lighter.
WithOUT an e – that stuff that shoots out of the clouds and seems to have a grudge against trees.

Real eyes

Here's a bit of homophonic graffiti a friend pointed out to me recently. A cool message, even if it is also a heavy metal song.
It's making the rounds online, and I'd cite the source if I had all day to track it down. So at least here's a URL that won't take you to a page full of user comments:
http://i.imgur.com/5UiGb.jpg