Welcome to my blog about homonyms!
Why homonyms? About a year ago, I graduated from Kaplan University. There were a couple of classes in my degree program that were a requirement. I wasn't excited about them, I thought that they were a waste of time, and I suffered through the semester. I'm sure many of you have taken classes that made you feel the same way. In this case, my class was Writing.
One of the assignments in this class involved sharing a pair of homonyms with the class. I thought this was a waste of time and instead of trying to think of a pair of homonyms on my own, I looked online to fulfill this assignment. I had some trouble finding them, but eventually succeeded. I thought "thank goodness, one more assignment closer to end of this course!"
But, ever since that assignment pairs of homonyms have been creeping into my head. I can't explain it, but every once in awhile when I think of a word that's similar to another, I remember that class. Maybe it made more of an impression on me than I thought. So to answer the question, I'm starting a blog about homonyms for two reasons:
- because they keep popping into my head, and
- to provide a list for other college students suffering through required Writing courses (and anybody else curious about homonyms, of course)!
That brings me to my next question some of you may be asking: What is a homonym? My instructor interpreted a homonym to mean words that sound the same but are spelled differently. I have since found out that this is not entirely true. Aside from homonyms, there are also homophones and homographs. Here are some definitions:
Homograph - a word of the same written form as another but of different meaning and usually origin, whether pronounced the same way or not, as bear "to carry;support" and bear "animal" or lead "to conduct" and lead "metal"
Homonym - all-inclusive term that describes not only words that are both homophonic and homographic, but words that are either one or the other. In common parlance, then words that sound alike, look alike, or both can be called homonyms.
All definitions are obtained from www.dictionary.com.
On this blog, I'll be focusing mostly on homophones (since that was the original assignment from my instructor). But, as I run out of ideas, I may include some homographs and some pairs that are both homophones and homographs.
