“Ice
creammmmm”, Saddy shouted at top of his voice. We, the group of friends were
out for a casual dinner outing on Sunday evening as Shyamlal, our cook and
friend, took off on Sunday evenings. As soon as the discussion on desserts
started, Saddy made his choice clear. All of us knew his weakness for chocolate
ice cream already. I, in a mood of having some fun (and that is my default mood
most of the time, especially when my besties are around), asserted, “I don’t think
you scream much. But what’s wrong today?”. Few of us laughed on the lame
joke that I cracked, and few gave the uninterested, ‘No, not again’ look on my
PJ. But that has never stopped me from cracking the next one, even worse PJ.
Has it?
 |
| play of words |
“Ice cream”
and ‘I scream”: two completely different phrases, but hear someone say it, and
if you don’t know the context, it is difficult to know which one he means. Oronyms, as we refer such phrases, are
the similar sounding but different phrases with different meanings. At times,
when these phrases are spoken, it is hard to establish when one word finishes and
other begins, thus causing two phrases to sound same. Few more examples are: ‘Fork
handles’ and ‘Four candles’, ‘That’s tough’ and ‘That stuff’, ‘realize, real
eyes and real lies’. Wait for the nerd note to see a super interesting example
in form of a poem.
Homophones are the words that have similar pronunciation,
irrespective of their spellings being same or different. Homographs, on the other hand, are the words which have same
spelling irrespective of their pronunciation. Combine these two, and we have
words which have same pronunciation and spellings, but different meanings. Such
words are known as Homonyms. This
means that an example of homonym will also be an example for homophone and
homograph
Few
examples of homophones are: ‘site and sight’, ‘cell and sell’, ‘ate and eight’,
‘to, two and too’, 'right and write', and many more.
Examples of
homographs (ones which are not homophones) are: ‘lead(as in leader, sound
similar to plead) and lead(the metal, sound similar to dead)’, ‘wind(the breeze, sound similar to tinned)
and wind(to turn, sound similar to kind)’, ‘sow(to plant a seed, sound similar to low) and sow(a
female pig, sound similar to wow)’. These are also referred as heterophones, heteronyms
Examples of
homonyms are: bat (the cricket sport equipment or an animal), Cricket (a field
sport or an insect), fine (of good quality or a monetary penalty or grounded in
to very small particles).
 |
| Classification of words. Image source : Wikipedia By Homograph_homophone_venn_diagram.png: Will Heltsleyderivative work: Cmglee (talk) - Homograph_homophone_venn_diagram.png, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link |
Nerd Note 1: In english language, there is only one septet
of homophones, which means seven different words with different meanings and
spellings but same sound. The septet is : raise, rays, rase, raze, rehs, res,
réis. Try finding the meaning of last three words and tell us in comments.
Nerd Note 2: A poem ‘eye halve a spelling chequer’ by Martha
Snow is a funny collection of oronyms. Read the full text of the poem here.
Remember
when we talked about homological words in one of our previous posts. If you
have missed that one, here is the link.
And as
always, thanks for reading.
Ayush!!!
Registered Environmental Health Specialist
ReplyDeleteThing
Journey