Homophone

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This article is about the term in linguistics. For other uses, see Homophony (disambiguation).

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A homophone is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning. The words may be spelled the same, such as "rose" (flower) and "rose" (past tense of "rise"), or differently, such as carat, caret, and carrot. A homophone is a specific type of homonym. The term may also be used to apply to units shorter than words, such as letters or group of letters which are pronounced the same as another letter or group of letters.

Homophones are often used to create puns, deceive the reader (as in crossword puzzles) or to suggest multiple meanings. The last usage is common in poetry and creative literature. An example of this is seen in Dylan Thomas' radio play Under Milk Wood: "The shops in mourning" where 'mourning' can be heard as 'mourning' or 'morning'. Another vivid example is Thomas Hood's poem "Faithless Sally Brown":

His death, which happen'd in his berth,

At forty-odd befell:

They went and told the sexton, and

The sexton toll'd the bell.

The first homophones that one learns in English are probably the homophones to, too, and two, but the sentence "Too much to do in two days" would confuse no one. (Note, however, when read with a natural rhythm in many dialects, to has a schwa and is not homophonous with too or two.)

There, their, and they're are familiar examples, as are lead (the metal) and led (the verb past participle).

Moped (the motorized bicycle) and moped (the past tense of mope) are examples of homographs; they are not homophones, because they are pronounced differently.

In some accents, various sounds have merged in that they are no longer distinctive, and thus words that differ only by those sounds in an accent that maintains the distinction (a minimal pair) are homophonous in the accent with the merger. Some examples from English are:-

pin and pen in many southern American accents.

merry, marry, and Mary in many western American accents.

The pairs do, due and forward, foreword are homophonous in most American accents but not in most British accents.

The pairs talk, torque, and court, caught are distinguished in rhotic accents such as Scottish English and most dialects of American English, but are homophones in many non-rhotic accents such as British Received Pronunciation.

Homophones are sometimes used in message encryption to increase the difficulty in cracking the decryption code. In this case the clear text is altered prior to being encrypted and the decrypting party substitutes the homophones for their true meaning after decrypting the message