Homophones

Homophones

Homophones are words that have exactly the same sound (pronunciation) but different meanings and (usually) spelling.

For example, the following two words have the same sound, but different meanings and spelling:

hour
our

In the next example, the two words have the same sound and spelling, but different meanings:

bear (the animal)
bear (to carry)

Usually homophones are in groups of two (our, hour), but very occasionally they can be in groups of three (to, too, two) or even four. If we take our "bear" example, we can add another word to the group"

bare (naked)
bear (the animal)
bear (to tolerate)

"Our bear cannot bear to be bare at any hour."

The word homophone is made from two combining forms: homo- (from the Greek word "homos", meaning "same" -phone (from the Greek word "phone", meaning "voice" or "sound" You will see many other English words using one or other of these combining forms.

The following list of 70 groups of homophones contains only the most common homophones, using relatively well-known words. These are headwords only. No inflections (such as third person singular "s" or noun plurals) are included.

air	heir
aisle	isle
ante-	anti-
eye	I
bare	bear	bear
be	bee
brake	break
buy	by
cell	sell
cent	scent
cereal	serial
coarse	course
complement	compliment
dam	damn
dear	deer
die	dye
fair	fare
fir	fur
flour	flower
for	four
hair	hare
heal	heel
hear	here
him	hymn
hole	whole
hour	our
idle	idol
in	inn
knight	night
knot	not
know	no
made	maid
mail	male
meat	meet
morning	mourning
none	nun
oar	or
one	won
pair	pear
peace	piece
plain	plane
poor	pour
pray	prey
principal	principle
profit	prophet
real	reel
right	write
root	route
sail	sale
sea	see
seam	seem
sight	site
sew	so	sow
shore	sure
sole	soul
some	sum
son	sun
stair	stare
stationary	stationery
steal	steel
suite	sweet
tail	tale
their	there
to	too	two
toe	tow
waist	waste
wait	weight
way	weigh
weak	week
wear	where

NB: In a few cases, a third homophone, although possible, has not been included for simplicity. Different varieties and accents of English may produce variations in some of these pronunciations. The homophones listed here are based on British English.