3 words that sound exactly the same when spoken...with different meanings..Is there a name for this?...Can anyone take the list further?

well, they are homonyms. Except beer does not sound like bear and bare.

thanks Jo...I say beer just like bear...or Bare....In Boston...it may sound different...they say beeer..like bee r..."give me a beer or "I see a bear...sound exactly the same to me..

Welcome, GB!

Speaking of cents/sense/cents, there's also cense. That makes four homonyms. Let our imaginations roam - are there other families of four? Maybe even larger ones?

PS. Depending on regional accent, you might also include bier and Bayer (aspirin, or maybe one who howls at the moon). Though personally I have three different pronunciations for them: beer/bier rhyming with "here;" bear/bare rhyming with "hair", and bayer rhyming with "mayor."
(If it matters - my accent is modified New York City.)

rose, rows, rhos, roes
crews, cruise, crus, cruz

Oh, yes, those Boston accents can be quite funny, as I've found on OEDILF.

My committee chair is Bostonian and says, "agendar" and "idear" and "Brendar." We have quite a good time listening to him!

Neveu...how impressive to have 4!

Some tri-homonyms:

mark, marc, marque
adds, ads, adze
your, you're, yore
you, ewe, yew
whined, wined, wind

It's a bit of a stretch, but you could have

told, tolled, towelled

Another stretch: air, heir, ere, and 'air (hair Cockney fashion with dropped aitch)

...which reminds me of a joke an East Londoner friend of mine says when he quotes his favorite Bach tune as "'Air on a G-string")

A pair of homophones I've always found interesting are 'raise' and 'raze' since, in sense, they have opposite meanings.

And to be a little nitpicky, what you have all quoted are not generally considered homonyms but homophones (words that sound the same but are spelled differently). And to be even nitpickier, according to the Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, homonyms are a category of words that are spelled or sound the same but have different meanings, while homophones are a sub-category of these.

quote:

Originally posted by Kalleh:



Some tri-homonyms:

mark, marc, marque
adds, ads, adze
your, you're, yore
you, ewe, yew
whined, wined, wind

You're is a homonym of ewer to me, not of your and yore. Hearing it pronounced your drives me crazy. Most of the time I hear it pronounced yer, which is alright.

Tinman

Can anyone come up with the quad?

Oh, balderdash, Tinman. Now it is essential that we meet because I have to hear how you pronounce "you're," "your," and "yore." I remember Bob telling me that he pronounces "fire" with one syllable, and I didn't believe him. When I met Bob, I asked him to pronounce it. What must sound like 1 syllable to him, sounds like 2 to me because we both pronounce "fire" similarly. I suspect that's the case with "your," "yore" and "you're."

Goofball, didn't Neveu already post two quad homonyms?

I found this online, though we have talked about the pronunciation of "err" before, which is controversial. However, at least in the U.S., the rhyming of "err" with "air" seems to be preferred:

air - what we breathe

are - 1/100th of a hectare

e'er - contraction of "ever"

ere - eventually

err - to make a mistake

heir - one who will inherit

Here is what that site includes for a quad-homonym:

bel - indian thorn tree

Bel - Babylonian god

bell - ding ding

belle - beautiful woman


Sorry...but I just couldn't come up with them myself.

quote:

well, they are homonyms. Except beer does not sound like bear and bare.

I have started a theme on Wordcraftjr about homophones, which are words that sound the same but have different meanings and spellings. That got me thinking about this thread.

Strictly speaking, aren't homonyms words that are spelled the same and sound the same, but have different meanings (like "bank" of a river and "bank" for money)? Aren't the words we've been posting really "homophones?" And then words that are spelled alike, but sound differently (like "bow" of a ribbon and "bow" as in bending from the waist in respect) are "homographs?"

gaaaaaaaaaah

I cannot believe I said that. HOMOPHONES. Of course. How could I... oh well, chalk it up to old age and dying brain cells.

the whole hole thyme time weave we've ben been talking on the Homo-phone and didnt know no it..

This thread inspired me to do a wordcraftjr theme on homophones. I found another one with 4 homophones. A Web site I have been using cited these 3:

Palate - taste
pallet - a platform for transporting goods; bed
pallette - a selection of paint

However, the author got mixed up on meanings; these are correct:

Palate - taste (or the roof of the mouth)
Pallet - A narrow hard bed or straw-filled mattress or a platform for storing or moving goods that are stacked on it
Palette - A board, typically with a hole for the thumb, which an artist can hold while painting and on which colors are mixed
Pallette - One of the rounded armor plates at the armpits of a suit of armor