Sarah Fitzgerald

English is a complicated language. Many words sound the same as each other yet have completely different meanings. These are called homophones. Let’s look at some examples:

1. They’re / There / Their

Three different words with different meanings:

They’re is a shortened version of “they are”. The apostrophe in the middle indicates that there is a letter missing. E.g. “They’re going to the cinema tonight to see Spiderman 3”
There denotes a place. E.g. “My husband is working over there in Tesco”
Their suggests ownership, something belonging to. E.g. “The children must put on their hats and scarves before going out to play”.

To / Too / Two

To: I’m going to the party tonight and I am going to have a ball.
Too: Also; as well. “If I’m going to the party, can my boyfriend come too?”
Two: A number, i.e. 2. “Two plus two is four”.

Aloud / Allowed

Aloud: Out loud. E.g. “Mary read aloud the letter she received from John”
Allowed: To be permitted to. E.g. “Since 2004, patrons are not allowed to smoke in enclosed spaces”.

You’re / Your

Remember the famous “We were on a break scene” between Ross and Rachel in Friends? “Y-O-U-Apostrophe- R-E means “you are”; Y-O-U-R is your!” So, to reiterate:

You’re: You are. “You’re not getting any younger, Sarah!”
Your: Second person possessive case of “you”: “Your birthday is coming up soon”.

Whether / weatherWhether: Used to introduce the first of two or more alternatives. E.g. “I don’t know whether I want to continue with college or start looking for a full-time job”.

Weather: Climate-related activity; a topic frequently used by Irish people to break the ice. E.g. “The weather is terrible today; it hasn’t stopped raining once”

Write / Right / Rite
Write is a verb, meaning to put something down on paper: “I write for a living because, apparently, life isn’t hard enough”.
Right can mean two things. It can mean “to be correct”, e.g. “You were right to stop me drinking that last pint” or it can denote location, an instruction when giving direction, e.g. “At the end of the road, turn right”.
Rite, as in rite of passage, Last Rites.

Here / hear:
Here is a specified location: “I’m here at the cinema, waiting for you”
Hear is what your ears do when they pick up sound (think ear = hear) e.g. “I hear the weather is going to be awful today”.

Blue / Blew:
Blue is a colour: “The sky is blue today”.
Blew is the past tense of the verb “blow”: “The big bad wolf blew down the house of straw”.

Knew / New
Knew is the past tense of the verb “to know”: “I knew the children wouldn’t eat their vegetables”.

New is something novel, something that has never been seen, heard, worn before, etc. “Do you like my new dress? I got it in Penney’s”.

Bye / By / Buy

Bye is a greeting used when departing from somewhere: “Bye for now”.

By can mean many things. It can mean beside, or near to “She stands by the window”. It can mean not later than: “I’ll be there by twelve”. It can also mean through the agency of, e.g. “death by hanging”

Buy means to purchase. “I would love to buy everything in Penney’s”.

Die / Dye

Male / Mail:

Male refers to gender: “Males tend to earn higher wages than females”

Mail is both a verb and a noun; to mail means to post or to send a letter or a package, but it also can denote the objects (letters and packages) themselves.

Dear / Deer:

Dear means precious, meaningful: “all I hold dear”. It also can mean “expensive”: “I’m not buying that dress; it’s too dear”.

A deer is an animal that lives out in the wild. Incidentally, the plural version of deer is the same as the singular version: “We saw many deer grazing in the meadow”.

Wind / wind:

Both are the same word, but sound different depending on the context in which they are used:

Wind with a short ‘I’ sound denotes a weather phenomenon: “The wind is howling”

Wind with a long ‘I’ sound is a verb: “I’m not trying to wind you up”

Pail / Pale:

A pail is a little used word for a bucket: “Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water”

Pale means light in colour and shade: “Her face went pale from the pain in her stomach”.

Ant / Aunt:

Ant is a small insect: “The ant carried the breadcrumb across the kitchen floor”

An aunt is a relative, namely the sister of your mother or father: “Aunt Betty always bakes the nicest buns”.

Three / Tree:

Three is a (magic!) number “One, two, three”
A tree is an oversized plant with roots: “The tree loses all its leaves in autumn”.

There are more homophones than these, of course (feel free to add them in the comments if you wish), but these are the more common ones. The English language is such a curious thing, and even I learn something new every day!