This content may contain affiliate links. If you purchase through these links I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. However, I only recommend products or services that I genuinely like and trust.
I’ve written a lot of posts about word pairs that sound the same or are spelled alike. These words trip people up all the time! But what about the words that describe these tricky grammar conundrums? What is the difference between a homophone, a homograph, and a homonym?
Table of Contents
Homophone Meaning
Homophones are two or more words that sound alike but have a different meaning or spelling.
There are hundreds of examples of homophones, but the following are some of the most popular examples:
- Accept/except
- Affect/effect
- Air/heir
- Bare/bear
- Coarse/course
- Hair/hare
- Knew/new
- Morning/mourning
- Principal/principle
- Stationary/stationery
- Tail/tale
- To/too/two
- Weather/wether/whether
Examples of Homophones in a Sentence
- I just can’t accept that summer is over.
- We are all going to the beach except Peter.
- Lucy was the heir to her father’s vast fortune, but she was missing.
- The air was crisp the day she went missing.
Homograph Meaning
Homographs are two or more words that have the same spelling but have a different meaning and pronunciation.
Here are some examples of the most common homographs:
- Bass – a type of fish/a low male singing voice
- Bow – a knot tied with two hoops/a weapon for shooting arrows/to bend the head or body in reverence or submission (verb)
- Desert – a waterless piece of land/to abandon someone (verb)
- Fine – something of high quality/something that’s very thin or narrow/a sum of money that’s imposed as punishment
- Entrance – the place where you enter a building or property/to delight or bewitch someone
- Lie – an untruth/to recline
- Minute – something that’s very small/a unit of time
- Offense – a breach of a law or rule/the attacking team or players in a sport
- Patient – to be able to accept delays or problems without becoming annoyed/a person receiving medical treatment or advice
- Plain – something that’s not decorated/a large area of flat land with few trees
- Row – a number of people or things lined up/to argue (verb)
- Sow – to plant something/an adult female swine
Examples of Homographs in a Sentence
- I plan to sow the seeds in early spring.
- The sow gave birth to her piglets in the middle of the night.
- The boy pulled the pretty bow out of her hair and threw it on the ground.
- I plan to bow out as soon as a replacement can be found.
Homonym Meaning
Just to confuse you more, homonym is a more generic term that describes when two or more words have the same spelling or pronunciation but a different meaning. So all homophones and homographs are homonyms as well.
A Trick for Remembering the Difference between Homophone, Homograph, and Homonym
All three words start with the prefix homo-. This comes from the Greek word homós, which means “one and the same” or “alike.”
The trick to remembering the difference is to take note of the end of each word.
The root graph comes from the Greek word graphein, which means written or drawn, so that refers to how something is spelled.
The root phone comes from the Greek word phōnos, which means sound, so that refers to how something sounds.
