#...homonyms. not homophones

[quillyfied]

apparently I'm becoming an impromptu grammar teacher, but while I have another post brewing about subject-verb agreement that I'm trying to bully into being more coherent than anything my grammar teachers taught me, have another instance of "Attack of the Homophones" that I myself fell victim to and when I realized it I had to go lie down:

Censor is to obscure or remove things. You may know this one from beeps on the TV when someone says a word not allowed by local programming, or new age internet Puritans claiming it's what's needed to protect metaphorical children they don't actually know or care about as a thin veneer to the belief that all media must be pure according to an arbitrary standard of morals that aren't actually universal or even helpful.

Sensor is a device which senses, like the thing in your car that senses when the key is inside of it and attempting to get the engine to turn over so the car will start but it stops working all of a sudden, probably related to sudden bitterly cold weather, and sends you into a tizzy for several days until the mechanic sorts it out and you realize you've been typing the wrong word in texts to your family the entire time.

[kirkendauhl-v2]

I heard someone call fake hippies with rich parents "Trustafarians" and I haven't been the same since

[ineffableobikin]

Bestie fic writers, it’s time for another edition of Helpful Homophone Hint from your friendly neighborhood beta!

If you’re pulling on/straining something — a string, tension, a Force bond, etc. — you’re pulling it taut.

If you once learned something from a teacher, you were taught.

I naturally have an eye for these kinds of homonym mixups, so it’s okay if you don’t! Let me beta read your fic and I’ll catch all these for you. 😃 It’s my way of giving back, for all the hours of enjoyment fanfic has given me!

(As always, fic writers, thank you for sharing your work with the world!! I appreciate you!)

[aficionadoenthusiast]

i am begging everyone, please learn the difference between "generally" and "genuinely"

[gtunesmiff]

2024 APRIL POEM-A-DAY CHALLENGE: DAY 25

Today's prompt: write a homonym poem.

A homonym is either (or both)

a homograph (word spelled the same with different meanings and possibly different pronunciations) or

a homophone (word that is pronounced the same but has different spellings).

Here are some examples of homophones and homographs to get you started:

20 Homophones Examples for Writers.

30 Homographs Examples for Writers.

Remember: These prompts are springboards to creativity. Use them to expand your possibilities, not limit them.

[bribearoh]

"By the Whore-y Hosts of Hoggoth!" hits a little bit different.

[legallyblindinoneeye]

Do you consider “formerly” and “formally” homophones? Because they’re both pronounced “formily”?

[definite-human]

Does "sing" in past tense = "sang" because "singed" is already a word?

[georgelthomas]

Homonyms and Homophones

Homonyms and Homophones - and explanation #amwriting #writingcommunity #homonyms #homophones #English #language #words #WriterCommunity

In the English language, Homonyms – are words that sound the same and are spelt the same but have different meanings. And Homophones – are words that sound alike but are spelt differently and have different meanings. Here are some examples of homonyms and homophones and their definitions. Homonyms Rose – this can mean ‘to have just gotten up’ and it is also ‘the name of a type of…

[gabelish]

Please tell me:

one hyper specific issue you have with English (or your parent/target language): grammar/spelling/punctuation/homophones/homonyms/etc that you are hopeless in

and one thing you’re great at that you know other people struggle with.

Mine are:

I’m absolutely incapable of identifying when I should use affect/effect and it’s related forms, to the point I will reword the sentence either in an work email or my novel to avoid having to use affect/effect.

But I am very good at picking out when to use who or whom, and my evil autistic ass loves correcting coworkers to say ‘whom’ and make characters do it in my book, despite the fact in both common speech and formal writing, whom is largely abandoned and so this skill is completely worthless, especially considering people do still care about affect/effect in formal writing (even if some people won’t notice).

[quillyfied]

I’ve been seeing way more typos in fanfic recently, like really strange ones, that I can only conclude are the work of AI based spellcheck options (and in some cases, creative phonetic spellings I really hope are human error bc beautiful).

However, there is one pedantic little quibble that I can present for the next Attack of the Homonyms, and it’s this:

Grisly is an adjective that means horrific or gruesome.

Grizzly means a kind of large North American bear (or, as in grizzled, means grey-haired).

It was not a grizzly murder scene, but it could be a grisly grizzled grizzly bear murder scene.

[i8i8t]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Sikh_warriors

Kartar Singh Taunque

Nanu Singh Saini

Sangat Singh Saini

Uday Singh Taunque

[elafree]

Homonyms and Homophones

Homonyms and Homophones

[mrsfoone]

The curse of homophones and homonyms in audiobooks: the sentence I heard in the middle of a make out scene - "read through a handout." The actual sentence - "Red threw a hand out." Red is the dude's nickname, obvs.

I told my sister and she replied "Haha! Right??? I never forget a moment in a book I once read... "her pants were edged with sobs". Like... how did you put Sobs on the edge of your trousers???"

[rongzhi]

Would you call two characters synonyms if they shared like, a basic pronunciation but different intonation e.g. 契 and 起 or is that exclusively for if they share the exact pronunciation (like 出 and 初)?

synonyms are when words mean the same thing

You could call 出/初 homophones (or homonyms).

In Chinese, 出/初 (same sound, same tone) would be considered homophones (同音字; "same syllable words").

契/起 (same sound, different tones) would be considered 近音字 ("approximate/close syllable words").

I think if you tried to apply 近音字 to English it would just be like beach/bitch, pin/pen, father/farther, cot/caught, (etc), where the words are spelled different, mean different things, but sound similar (though perhaps not the same, in most accents).

In languages with the Latin alphabet, homonyms are words that are spelled the same but mean different things whereas homophones are words that sound the same but aren't spelled the same and mean different things; since Chinese is a language based on characters, there are no true homonyms, although I think some translation dictionaries still use the word instead of homophone, which is why I bring it up at all.