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Contributor: Jennifer Blanchard. Lesson ID: 13682
Don’t let homophones trick you! Learn how to spot and use words that sound alike but have different meanings, so you never mix up flour and flower again!
The Great Homophone Mix-Up
Jace thought he was being helpful. His mom asked him to “buy flour” at the store, so he proudly came home with a bouquet of bright yellow flowers. That’s when his mom held up the empty bag of sugar and sighed. “How am I supposed to bake a cake with these?”
But the mix-ups didn’t stop there. On the bus home, his friend Leo leaned over and said, “Let’s meet up tonight at the park.” So, naturally, Jace arrived wearing a full suit of armor.
Leo stared. “Dude… what are you wearing?”
“You said to knight up at the park!” Jace clanked his way forward. “I didn’t have a sword, but I borrowed this from the school play.”
Leo facepalmed. “I said to meet up. At night. Like, after dinner.”
When his teacher wrote a note on the board the next day that said, "Their going too the store two buy to things," Jace threw up his hands. “That’s not right!” he shouted.
And just like that, he realized—homophones were everywhere, causing chaos!
Figure out how to use homophones the right way!
In this lesson, you will learn to use context to help you determine the meaning of certain homophones, and you will also use the correct homophones in different contexts.
This is important because it will help you increase your vocabulary and properly spell these homophones, which will help others correctly understanding your writing.
Homophones are words that:
sound the same (meaning they are pronounced the same)
look different (meaning they are spelled differently)
have different meanings (meaning, well...they don't mean the same thing!)
Homophones often come in pairs, but they can work in bigger sets as well. For example:
blue and blew (pair of homophones)
too, two, and to (larger set of homophones)
You would be amazed at how often these words can get confused for each other though!
There are thousands of homophones in the English language, including many commonly used words. Keep in mind that auto-correct most likely will not recognize an incorrectly used homophone since the spelling of the actual word might still be correct.
Therefore, it's your job to be as aware of homophones as you can! While you may memorize them and their usage, it is also possible to refer to the context (the words or sentences surrounding the homophone) to guide you toward understanding the correct meaning.
Let's look at some commonly misused homophone examples and their meanings:
| accept | to take or receive something | |
| except | to exclude something or to leave it out |
| affect | to influence something or cause something | |
| effect | the result of an action |
| you're | contraction for you are | |
| your | pronoun to show possession |
| are | present form of the verb to be | |
| our | plural possessive form of we |
| it's | contraction for it is | |
| its | possessive form of it |
There are MANY more examples, some of which you will practice in the next section!
Obviously, this lesson focuses on homophones. However, some people confuse homophones with homographs.
Homographs are words that:
look the same (meaning they're spelled the same)
sound differently (meaning they're not pronounced the same)
have different meanings (They don't mean the same thing!)
Homograph examples include:
bass (a fish) and bass (a low, deep voice or instrument)
entrance (an entryway) or entrance (filled with wonder or delight)
lead (a type of metal) or lead (to have people follow you)
In the examples above, think about the different pronunciation for each word as you are reading them! You may even want to look up some other homograph examples.
But let's get back to homophones and move on to the Got It? section for some practice together!
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