Horrific Homonyms

Homonyms... They're enough to make me wince because people mess them up so often. However, I can see where these mistakes come from, so I can at least empathize, as long as the writer puts in the effort to avoid using the wrong word.

Homonyms are among the very things that make the English language so hard. However, I must add that other languages have similar problems. Through my degree in French, I can think of a few examples in which a slight mispronunciation could completely alter the meaning of what you said...

There are the simple homonyms like there, their and they're or two, to and too (no, I'm not going dancing...)

But then there are lots of others that people may not even realize are homonyms.

So what is a homonym? Homonyms are words that sound or are spelled alike but have different meanings, depending on how they are used.

Homophones sound the same and may be more likely to be recognized as a homonym. Homographs are spelled the same.

Here's an example... Your car sure doesn't look hale after that hail storm moved through.

Thus hail and farewell mine faithful steed.
Off to the junkyard with thee.
For now another in thine stead
Must needs meet my needs.

Should you get caught in that said hail storm, hit the deck! And I'm not talking about a house of cards!

Hale - to be healthy, able-bodied.

Hail - well you could be saying hello to someone or calling out to them, as in to hail a cab, but most people are going to think of those hard pellets and balls of ice that can fall during thunderstorms.

Deck - a set of 52 playing cards or perhaps 78 Tarot cards. But there is also the deck of a sea-going vessel, or perhaps of a starship if you are a scifi fan. And if you don't know what that second one is, then someone might deck you!!

Like the way words change through history, some homonyms fall out of general use. Thus they become obsolete, or perhaps forgotten altogether.

Alas the tales of yore do fade
Till nothing but gibberish remains.
Once those tales round the hearth were told
For in those days, such tales were germane.

You're probably wondering about those tales of yore, the stories of yesteryear. Well, take a look at your book of fairy or folk tales.

Here's some I thought of for the holiday shopping season - Be careful or you might get mauled at the mall!

There was also plenty of fear that the weak economy would have made the big shopping week drag...

Either way, you needed to move quick to get the buy you wanted or you could wave it bye!

Please don't patronize me, or I will not patronize your establishment again.

Maybe you wouldn't mind my making a couple religious references...

In some sects, sex is a big no no. Just look at the Puritans for that one. They probably had one or two days a month in which to engage in such carnal delights. However, they most likely would not have found it a pleasure but a biblical duty.

Indeed their women were most likely chaste, and certainly not chased through the streets... Though Hester sure chased after her daughter's father, not her husband.

It's kind of hard to come up with jokes and playful phrases for all of the sets of words I found. So here's a bunch of sentences using homonyms I have collected in the past several months...

It was a lovely day on the isle when the young woman marched down the aisle.

The holy man prayed for any kind of help he could get, but all his efforts seemed wholly pointless and the roof of the building remained holey, even during the deep cold of winter, making the sanctuary almost unusable.

Singing in praise, the entire congregation prays for deliverance and peace. Meanwhile, somewhere in the world... A predator preys on innocent flesh...

Tears blurred the archaeologist's sight when she saw how the dig site had been desecrated.

The principal has to uphold her principle with regards to educating students and discipline in classrooms.

The marshall tried to marshal all the people once martial law had been declared in the city. A curfew was instated as were many other restrictions, with which the people were not happy.

The aide rendered aid as it was asked for. I hope he doesn't need a hearing aid, or he won't be as effective.

Using tacks to organize your tax information may not be a good idea...

That showed a lack of tact when he tacked that awful poster over the lovely mural.

Why would you want a hanger in the hangar? No closets.

To punish someone in olden days, that person might be wracked by pain by tightening the rack. I wonder if perhaps the person might have been a bit too obvious in ogling the lady's rack...

While the wind turned the vane on top of the house, the doctor searched in vain for a vein in his patient's arm.

Hour by hour, our work progresses apace.

Sometimes you have to reach higher in order to get that notice of hire.

The Pole leaned against the pole while being asked various questions in a poll. As long as it wasn't about magnets, he seemed fine.

I guess you could say the tree ceded its seeds as the season turned and the wind blew the little helicopter-like maple pods away.

It takes many steps from shearing to cleaning to carding and spinning to weaving and more before such a sheer cloth can be made. I hope the winds do not sheer too much, or the fragile fabric may be damaged.

You might find a mite in those nasty sheets.

You could go back for the ore, which will slow you down, or you could just grab the oars and get across the lake faster.

There is no way I would ask you how much you weigh! I know I don't like to admit to mine!

It seems such a waste to see a woman walk by who has no waist or any other curves because she practically starves herself to meet an impossible ideal of beauty. Nothing but a stick she is, with very little to even mark her as a woman!

I hope this pallet of wines I brought up for the celebration will tantalize your palette and lift your spirits.

I need to pare the pair of pears I picked up at the store.

How about an I haz Cheezburger-like reference? Oh noes! My nose knows you haz tuna!

The sole soul wandered the building all alone... Here's hoping there isn't a sole flopping on the floor because that would make the sole of that person's shoe most slick!

Or perhaps you are a Harry Potter fan? There are two sets in this one - Uh oh, someone just threw a Dungbomb! The reek is wreaking havoc as everyone's trying to get through the one door!

I must say, I peeked at the book, which piqued my interest. I wonder if the series is like a jagged mountain, peaked with plot twists hiding the conclusion until the very end!

The present seems like a good time to present the present. Or the dove dove to avoid the cat's claws. (Yes, most of these two come from an e-mail that used to circulate every now and then.)

For a more unique one, the prettiest presents seems to have a presence about them, that little something that draws the eye. I can't help but glance at them.

Do you know whether or not the weather will ruin our picnic.

The rain got his reins wet, marking a damp beginning to the young prince's reign, especially when he lost his grip.

Nay, I did not hear the horses neigh when they were disturbed.

What a bore, is there anything better to hunt than boar?

He cocked his pistol while the cock crowed to greet the morning sun. (I could certainly make a sexual reference here, but I don't think that's necessary as I'm fairly sure you can already figure out exactly what I might have written for yourself!)

He spent the morning mourning his loss, and then turned to drink to drown his sorrows.

There is naught you can do to untie that knot. Many have tried and failed. At least until Alexander who would not allow anything to stand in his way and used his sword to cut through the Gorgon's Knot.

I can't bear to see your bare rear! And I hope you don't see a bear when you get out of your tent!

The troupe of players trooped into the room en mass.

I don't think you can do much to mold the mold into any kind of contained shape. It's just going to spore and get absolutely everywhere!

Along the same lines of that one... The moulding was molding and had to be completely torn out of the old house. (Yes that is a variant spelling.)

No silly! I'm not looking to buy a new pair of jeans! I'm examining the genes in this strand of DNA...

I'm bored with this board game.

I like to listen to tales told at the hearth, some of which have animals with many tails.

It looks like quite a feat when a cat lands on its feet after falling off a bookshelf.

Pay you no mind to my twisting words
For my mind is twisted and twined
It will wind and wend all over the place
And who the hell knows where you'll wind up
But look not to the pitchers mound now
For this will come out of left field.

Keep in mind that this is by no means a complete list of all the homonyms in the English language. I've been bouncing a few others around, thinking of adding them to this. But I saw how long my list had gotten and I decided to leave some out... There are probably even ones associated with the ones I've used that I haven't included. So if you think of one I don't have here, feel free to add it, especially if you can use it/them in a sentence!

(This is just me being a bit geeky, not that this whole post hasn't been. But if you have never seen the Robot Chicken spoof of Schoolhouse Rock in which they talk about homonyms... Well, here you go! This link is from Meta Tube.)

Writing Like a Text

I've talked about quality writing before and I've talked about how texting is not English. In that latter post, I mentioned that I had other reasons for not considering texting to be English.

Now I will address some other such reasons. Specifically the lack of grammar, punctuation and capitalization in most texts.

Unlike proper written English, text language often has no, or minimal, punctuation. If you're lucky, you might see a period, maybe a comma. (Though I do have to concede that most people sending texts do have to deal with a character limit.) Most of the time, none at all. However, the exclamation mark seems to be the most common since people sending texts lean toward the dramatic...

There is a little fluke with some punctuation. Some words that should have apostrophes but don't when used in text language actually do create real words, just with very different meanings. For example - won't and wont. One is saying you will not do something, but the other is something you are inclined to do.

As for grammar, well since that falls into divisions that are specifically denoted by punctuation as well as sentence structure, and you're not likely to see much of that either.

Say I want to explain something to you, but I want to make sure it's clear. Secondary clauses, agreement and more. That means, if I want to mark each aspect of the idea, I have to show you the divides. That is done through my grammar and my punctuation working in conjunction, demonstrating my idea.

The lack of these two items alone makes the style of text language almost too fluid to follow. Most of the time, you have to read the message out loud to even figure out what it's saying.

And it really doesn't help that things are rarely capitalized. Not even I, let alone the beginnings of sentences or proper nouns. It's a lower case blur.

Capital letters can help express importance or recognize the status of something. If I'm saying something about myself or about a well-known landmark, I should denote such things by capitalizing the terms, such as Montmartre, Harrisonburg, United Kingdom, Hans Christian Anderson, Clovis, just to name a few...

On top of that, the sheer oddity of spelling in such messages... Very confusing at times. And there are days when I have absolutely no idea what someone is trying to write.

For example, here's a sample of text language I recently saw - "i neva wuda thought in million years she wud do sumn like dis."

If you say it out loud, you can get most of the message, which translates into "I never would have thought in a millions years she would do something like this."

Neva for never, wuda for would have, sumn for something and dis for this.

It seems rather ironic to me that some of these idiosyncrasies of texting are actually the way people speak these days. It really bugs me when I hear someone say "ax" for "ask." And all the dropped t's and d's. It's mountain, not mounian. Bottle, not bodle.

The hardest word in the English language might be "the" or it might be "lollipop," but "dat" doesn't mean you should become sloppy and not say "that" correctly!

Somewhere running around there's a children's book that says avoid the gonnas and wannas. Well, I'm going to find that one because I want to have other people remember to speak clearly. I think it's called "English Can be Fun" by Herbert Prescott.

Ever tried to read one of the poems from "Oh Say Can You Say?" by Dr. Seuss out loud? Now that's a test students should take! Not the Standards of Learning exams that seem to leave every child behind and promote mediocrity.

Enunciate! As I often yell at my nephew who has a nasty tendency to mumble and slur his words so badly I have absolutely no idea what is coming out of his mouth...

So from spoken to written. The beginnings of modern text language appear to have developed in sloppy speaking. As Henry Higgins once said, "In America, they haven't used [English] for years."

How about this one - its messed up that sum ppl miss use stuff like this

OK, that one reads "It's messed up that some people misuse stuff like this." Not that tricky a one until you get to the "miss use."

How about this one - "id advise u to get to no ur son a lil better cause from the sound of it u dont no anything about him."

Lots of common forms of text language there. Translation - "I'd advise you to get to know your son a little better because from the sound of it you don't know anything about him."

Here's a nice long one that might mess you up - i cant belive all they gave tht pos is 6 years he should have gt mre oh well hopfully hell get real aquanted with a big black guy n prison he better hope i dnt c him cause we gta talk if i were him id hide cause i gt people in all the correctional facilitys in virginia.... o n sissy pull the wool out from your eyes he was the CROWED he was the influence he gt all those people to follow him.... n hell most of these people were inosent

Translation - "I can't believe all they gave that piece of shit is six years. He should have got more. Oh well, hopefully he'll get real acquainted with a big black guy in prison. He better hope I don't see him because we got to talk. If I were him, I'd hide because I got people in all the correctional facilities in Virginia. Oh, and sissy, pull the wool out from your eyes. He was the crowd, he was the influence. He got all those people to follow him. And hell, most of these people were innocent."

Took a couple of times reading that one to make sense of the mangle. And that specific example is very good to see the degeneration of spelling. Inosent for innocent. Aquanted for acquainted.

Makes me think of that old e-mail joke where the Germans wanted everyone to speak German, not English, but when the other countries wouldn't agree to it, the Germans insisted on various changes and English almost got changed back its Germanic roots in the end anyway... I still have a copy of that e-mail somewhere. I shall have to find it...

But I specifically remember things like getting rid of the hard "c" and replacing it with a "k." Or getting rid of the silent e... Most of the rule changes affected writing... There were numerous examples in the original message. I just can't remember all of them.

And exclaiming "Y'all come back, y'hear!" Or asking someone "D'jeat?" (If you don't know what that second one is, it's "did you eat?")

"Enuf already!!" Are we truly becoming so lazy that we can't even speak, or write, in such a way as to make ourselves clearly and easily understood?

Maybe I'm just plain old-fashioned, but I find the degradation of English to be a disturbing and disheartening transition...

To put it bluntly, I believe texting is becoming the English version of Pig Latin or even Creole.

I'd be most "gr8ful" to never have to see such language again (license plates notwithstanding). People really "shud chek" what they're writing and saying because who knows "whut" you'll see or hear next.

Posting Date - January 30, 2011

Quality Writing...

If there is one thing that bothers me about the dependence on technology so many people have developed, it is the simple fact that spell check DOESN'T catch everything! In fact, it'll sometimes mess you up worse. There is simply NO replacement for actual proofreading.

Example: I saw a story at one point where the author was talking about President "Back" Obama. Wait a minute... I think we're missing a syllable. So spell check would say the word was correct... And that's the problem.

Mrs. Malaprop is probably flipping her pages, going nuts for some of the things that slip by because people are relying too much on spell check. "For all the things we take for granite," READ WHAT YOU WRITE! (And that is an actual malapropism I have seen. Not the funniest, but certainly up there!)

I'm sure it often looks like I've made a mistake, but I try very hard not to do so. What's the main thing I do? I proofread like crazy!! Two, three, four times... I will proofread and proofread until I have whatever it is almost memorized! And then you know what? If I can, I have somebody ELSE look at what I've written. Why? Because fresh eyes will catch mistakes mine won't see!

I've had it happen many times, more times than I care to count, that I've written something that looks fine to me. My brain is reading whatever I wrote as correct. But someone else takes a look at it, and they find spelling issues, transposed letters, dropped letters and other mistakes. I wasn't seeing those mistakes because, as far as my brain was concerned, those mistakes didn't exist.

Even in writing this entry, I'm proofreading as I go and finding several places where I left out a word. Maybe my brain is going faster than my fingers or maybe I'm simply not actually writing the words but my brain thinks I am. How confusing can you get? That's a little confusing even for me, and it's coming from me!

A lot of the time, I'll be using a writing style that might seem a little archaic or words that aren't used everyday. That could simply be, since my mother was an English teacher, I was taught a more strict, regimented writing style. But the lackadaisical attitude I have seen from so many people when it comes to their writing, it really makes me wonder what people are being taught now.

What is the basic structure of a sentence? Subject, Verb, Object. Something does something to something. Then you get fancy and add extra clauses, adjectives, adverbs, etc. But you have to have those three elements first. THEN get fancy.

The basics do matter, especially in print-type media, which a lot of the Internet still is despite all the fancy JAVA, ASP, PHP and everything else you can use.

Even in just writing a basic paper, watch what you are writing.

Some programs do have a "grammar check" in them, but I don't trust it because it seems to underline the strangest things. However, a grammar point of contention with me is AGREEMENT. An organization, like a hospital or a single business, is an IT! That means ITS business, not THEIR business does something. The only time a writer should use their for an organization is if that writer is talking about more than one organization.

In mentioning "their," I can't help but cringe at the thought of homonyms. PAINFUL! There are so many words that sound alike but are spelled differently, and mostly mean different things. For example, probably two of the most common homonym mistakes I see involve their, they're and there or your, you're and yore (add that last one if you really want to screw with somebody's head. It has amazed me how many people don't know what that third one means).

Sometimes it's just a missed letter... Sometimes it's the completely wrong word in the given context of the specific sentence. Those details can make you, as a writer, look smart or ignorant.

Here's one for you - What are the five ways to say "ough?" "Ow" (bough), "off" (cough), "oh" (dough), "oo" (through) and "uff" (rough). This one works best if you say it aloud... Otherwise the mistake with "The dough is rising" when you say dough like cough doesn't quite make sense. My mother says this was originally in "The Reader's Digest" many years ago... Something about a recent immigrant on a subway with a bowl of dough. Don't ask me because I have no idea why in the world someone would be on a subway with a bowl of fresh dough...

There are so many potential mistakes, most of which can be caught by proofreading. It also helps to know basic written English such as how to write numbers, subject-verb agreement, subject-object agreement and so much more. To me, it seems as though English, as a written language, is dying. Otherwise, what is Ebonics?

Yes, spell or grammar check CAN help, BUT they CANNOT do it all. Like the above examples of Back Obama and taking things for granite... The words are spelled correctly, but they are incorrect in that usage! If you simply take an extra minute and reread what you have written, you'll avoid a lot of potential problems.

Learning any written form of language is hard. Being a person who is bi-lingual, I can say that and be honest. However, English is a screwy language. And while every language has its foibles, simply paying attention will help most people avoid pitfalls.

Don't rely solely on spell check or grammar check. You are your own spell check and grammar check. You, who ever you are, as a writer, should be fixing those mistakes.