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#1: Cynthia D. Price (cdprhys) on Nov 28, 2009

Nice puzzle, but one tiny correction.

You're defining a homophone, not a homonym. A homonym is a word that has the same meaning as another. A homophone is one that sounds like another, though has a different spelling/meaning.

Thanks, Cynthia. When I looked up "homonyms" the first site I found had a nice list of homophones that were described as homonyms, along with a nice definition, that was also wrong, that I believed was rigbht, published by someone who claims to know all about homonyms.

That will teach me to believe everything I read on the Internet.

For those who wonder what is going on, the original title for this puzzle series was Homonyms, now changed to Homophones.

But I am already thinking of good homonym puzzles. :-)

Nice one TK. You inspired me to make a homophone puzzle too. Check out #7241.

Okay!

Totally wonderful! I really like this contest. The puzzles are so great!

Glad you think so!

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Thanks, Babarann.

Did some googling.

Nobody seems to agree with Cynthia's definition of "homonyms". She said they have the same meanings. All web references say they have different meanings, and the same pronunciation. Different words with the same meanings are synonyms.

Some references (and apparently some dictionaries say "homonym" and "homophone" mean the same thing. Others say that "homonyms" are spelled alike and "homophones" are spelled differently (but in either case have different meanings and the same sound). Others say that "homophones" must indeed be spelled differently but "homonyms" is a general term that includes all pairs of words that sound alike but have different meanings, regardless of spelling.

Wikipedia does the only possible sensible thing in this case, and draws a venn diagram:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Homograph_homophone_venn_diagram.png

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Thanks, Jan, for doing the homework. I think I'll go with Websters:

"Two words are homonyms if they are pronounced or spelled the same way but have different meanings."

"Two words are homophones if they are pronounced the same way but differ in meaning or spelling or both (e.g. bare and bear)."

I like Wiki's venn diagram.

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Homonyms: From the greek "Same name" Sound and look alike: Bank (bench), bank (slope).

Homophones:From the Latin "Same sound" different meaning: coarse, course.

Homographs: From the Latin "Same "writing"" different sound: Lead (verb), lead (metal)

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Thanks, Adam.

so fun. I like this series a lot!

Thansk, Telly.

great images! i love how you did shakespeare. fun solve, too.

great bard

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