Same sounding words many meanings. 6

[hairlessupportmonkey]

The things one thinks of in the shower.

Ok, so my partner is Vietnamese, and their language is difficult to master due to one word might have five meanings depending on how it is said and in what context. Typical far eastern language.

But English as we know likes to break its own rules and have a few words that sound the same, spelt differently with different meanings.

What came to mind:

Pour
Poor
Pore
Paw

I can think of several differing meanings for those four words that basically sound identical (perhaps you are American and really push the "r" sound, but that is another conversation about "English!")

Can anyone think of some more obscure words like this?

ACSS - SME
General Geek

 

[strongm]

kwbMitel, the word you are looking for is homograph - and I fear Omni may have misled you. There are several examples that are longer than lather, for example:

Compound - enclosure in which workers, prisoners, soldiers are confined
Compound - composed of elements, not simple, eg compound word, chemical compound
Compound - increase or add to, as in "a large fine would only compound the level of the debt"

(there are other meanings as well, but they are mostly closely related to the second definition given above*, so probably not worth listing)

*eg to combine, mix or unite - so we might have "to compound a compound"

 

[hairlessupportmonkey]

Ohh - yes, Compound is a great example.

ACSS - SME
General Geek

 

[IPGuru]

boy as in youn mail
bouy as in marker float - but the Merkins mangle the pronounciation of that one

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[guitarzan]

Merkins mangle the pronounciation
But we can spell it ;-)

 

[johnherman]

red
read

I work with a lot of people from South Asia who speak a variety of the Queen's English. I often need to "indoctrinate" them regarding certain words that might be misinterpreted in the US. One recent arriving software guy told a woman on the team that he did not yet intimate that to her. I immediately performed damage control.

From dictionary.reference.com
in·ti·mate:
verb (used with object), in·ti·mat·ed, in·ti·mat·ing.
1. to indicate or make known indirectly; hint; imply; suggest.
2. Archaic. to make known; announce.

One more: About a decade ago, I had a coworker (from India) who was working on my Data Warehouse team. Until I talked with him, he was ending his e-mails to our (internal) customers with: Send your queries to me. I cautioned him that some of our user community might send him SQL to write or correct.

==================================
The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was - Steven Wright

 

[IPGuru]

Merkins mangle the pronounciation
But we can spell it ;-)

Its one of the few words you do spell corerectly ;-)

centre, colour, fibre, humour, favour

& even when you do spell then correctly you get the meaning arse about face (especialy when it comes to the word fanny )

However I do apologise for any mis-spellings I may have made, I am sure there are many more to come.


A Maintenance contract is essential, not a Luxury.
Do things on the cheap & it will cost you dear

 

[yelworcm]

Sounds like you need an old Abbott and Costello routine. I still crack up at the line "And how, I need the dough."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_TGQ7rGL-Q

 

[IPGuru]

I always liked Abbot & Costello.

the little I know about US rounders (Base ball?) comes from "Who's on first"

A Maintenance contract is essential, not a Luxury.
Do things on the cheap & it will cost you dear

 

[flyboytim]

homonyms - homographs with a variety of meanings:
Slug , (animal), a slow moving soft-bodied mollusk with no shell (-> sluggard, one who is sluggish),
slug , (metal), a metal projectile from a firearm, or a metal blank in engineering, a counterfeit coin
slug a mouthful of drink from a bottle usually,
slug an imperial unit of mass = 32.174049 lb or 1/12 of a blob,
slug (v) to hit, usually with a fist (-> slugger)

plus several more technical usages according to

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slug_(disambiguation)

 

[kwbMitel]

@ Strongm

No, I remember quite clearly and the name of the word type was quite complicated. You missed the requirement that the words are pronounced differently (understandable considering the rest of this thread).

**********************************************
What's most important is that you realise ... There is no spoon.

 

[strongm]

>You missed the requirement that the words are pronounced differently

No, I did not. Indeed, my first post in this thread, where I clarified the OP's requirements was specifically about this issue.

It is true, however, that generically a homograph can also includes words with the same spelling and pronunciation that mean different things. To be super precise, the term you are looking for is heteronym, which really isn't any more complicated.

I should also point out that my example is definitely a heteronym in UK English (which is what I speak), where the emphasis shifts between the syllables, and thus the pronunciation is different for all three versions.

 

[kwbMitel]

@ Strongm - Although heteronym is not what I remember it does define what I am describing.

Interestingly, when I look online for lists of heteronyms, compound is very hard to find (absent from most, but not all lists). Of the 3 words you define I would pronounce 2 identically (the first 2). I can accept that this might be different in your region however. This is supported by the most comprehensive list I can find.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:English_heteronyms

which shows a different pronounciation in the UK.

**********************************************
What's most important is that you realise ... There is no spoon.

 

[ChrisHirst]

lather - A user of the machine called a lathe

Actually a lathe operator is a 'turner', fourteen years in engineering and I never heard any of the Cincinnati multi-spindle lathe operators called a 'lather'. Seen quite a few get in a 'bit of a lather' if a parting off blade snapped and embedded the tip in the machine's guard cowling.

Chris.

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Time flies like an arrow, however, fruit flies like a banana.
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[kwbMitel]

@ ChrisHirst - Agreed, it is probably a stretch but I can find that definition on heteronym websites so not that much of a stretch. As I said originally, I was not the originator of the info tidbit. I remember it as being posed as a riddle to which the answer was Lather. This, plus the timeframe and the fact that I remember it as a trusted source, leads me to the likely source as Omni magazine as they had a very entertaining brain teaser section in every issue. This is not to say that they did not make mistakes. I know I caught 2 significant (to me) errors in their answers one of which actually prompted a letter to the editor from me. I still remember that puzzle too. It was Dogs Mead and they forgot to provide the year which made the puzzle unsolvable except by trial and error. I can still remember the year (within the puzzle) accurately and was going to state it here but I just found versions of the puzzle that do not refer to the year directly so I won't spoil it for anyone who might want to look it up.

**********************************************
What's most important is that you realise ... There is no spoon.

 

[SantaMufasa]

The 10-year Anniversary of the following, fun Making an Impression thread, thread1256-959234, is coming up in three months. The object of the thead/game was to identify as many Three-word Homophones as possible. We came up with more than 130 "triplets" during the life of that thread. (I won't list them all here without some sort of acclamation. )

Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA)
“People may forget what you say, but they will never forget how you made them feel.

 

[djj55]

Words with two (or more) meaning can get you into trouble.

Say I want to do a web search for a rawhide strap to put on my walking stick. So I look up "leather thong".

I would not actually do this search as I know I can get a pair of shoe laces to solve the problem, but you get the idea.

djj
The Lord is my shepherd (Psalm 23) - I need someone to lead me!

 

[Andrzejek]

By the same ways, djj55

A few years ago everybody (mostly computer people) was talking ‘DSL this’ and ‘DSL that’. So I asked: “What does DSL stand for?” People started to guess. So I looked it up on the Internet. ‘Digital subscriber line’ was the second meaning of DSL. The first definition is not appropriate for the work place – trust me on this one.

Also, flammable and inflammable. Be careful with those two.


Have fun.

---- Andy

A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station.

 

[yelworcm]

There was once an email that went around (may still be going around as a Facebook post) with a bunch of sentences where the same spelling of a word appeared twice, but was given a different pronunciation and definition. I can't remember more than one of them at the moment, but it seems similar to what you may be after:

He wound the bandage around the wound.

Maybe it is really from a third grade reading lesson, or something.

 

[SamBones]

These are both spelled the same and pronounced the same, yet have different meanings...

Contacts = What I put on my eyes so I can see
Contacts = My address book
Contacts = To touch something

 

[SantaMufasa]

These are both spelled the same and pronounced the same, yet have different meanings...

Sam, aren't such words simply "a word with multiple meanings"? If that is the case, then I believe that set holds the record for a single word with multiple meanings: 464.

I'm still confused on the purpose of this thread. It seems to get murkier and murkier. In the beginning, the first few posts implied that the purpose was to identify true homophones (i.e., two or more words that differ in spelling but are pronounced with the same sound(s).)

What is the current concensus so that we don't get off into the weeds?

Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA)
“People may forget what you say, but they will never forget how you made them feel.