Homophones and homographs: meaning and examples

Since the Spanish language is enormously rich, there are really peculiar situations. Within this lexical wealth of our vocabulary, we are going to know in this lesson from a PROFESSOR what is the meaning and examples of homophones and homographs. You will see that they are concepts that, although they may seem very similar, and, sometimes, even confused by their similarities, in reality they are clearly different.

Therefore, it is necessary that we know well what the difference is between one and the other. So we will study in detail what each one consists of, and we will see various examples that will make it very clear what are the particularities of homophones and homographs. We already begin with the explanations on the subject at hand.

Within our lesson today on the meaning and examples of homophones and homographs, we begin with the former, that is, the Homophones words.

Homophone words are those that, even writing differently, they sound the same when they are pronounced. In addition, they have one more particularity, and that is that their meaning, as they are written, also differs, so that we have to observe in what context they are being used to know exactly what concept they are referred.

In this case, as always, it is best to see it in examples so that you are very clear about the meaning of a homophone word:

• Buoy: means placing buoys so that the nets are not washed away by the tide in the sea. They also serve as limitation and delimitation in the same context.
• Dent: in this case, it is about making a dent on the surface of an object, especially metal.

So we observe that both words are pronounced exactly the same, without any difference, but their meaning is diametrically opposite. Seen in context, they would have nothing to do with it, since we observed them in an example:

• Must buoy this part of the beach so that bathers do not exceed the limit.
• Be careful with the helmet, you're going to dent.

As we can see, looking at the context in which each of these verbs is used, we can define that it has nothing to do with one another, although the pronunciation has been exactly the same.

Curious case of homophone words

With regard to homophone words, the curious case of the particularities of pronunciation according to territories is observed. For example, if we look at a good part of Andalusia, or almost all of Latin America, we find that words that are not spelled exactly the same, are pronounced the same way. For example:

• Shut down: that is, close a piece of furniture, door, etc.
• Saw: cut a piece of wood with a saw.

Since many of these areas are pronounced similarly C, S and Z, and are often interchanged, this curious phenomenon occurs. Beyond this, there are other clear examples of homophone words:

• Governess: baby sister.
• Is: city of the Netherlands.
• Find: from the verb to find.
• Basin: type of container.
• Empty: with nothing inside.
• Cape: military title or geographic phenomenon.
• Dig: from the verb dig.
• Undone: from the verb undo.
• Discard: from the verb to discard.

Let's see now within our lesson on the meaning and examples of homophones and homographs, what we mean by the latter.

In this case, the words are homographs when they are written in the same way, but they have different meanings. That is, they are also known as polysemic, since they are pronounced and written the same, but they can obey different concepts depending on the context in which they are used.

A clear example of homograph words is found in:

• Buttons: refers to the pieces of wood, plastic or metal that are used to button shirts, pants, cuffs, etc.
• Buttons: a professional in charge of doing the work of service or waiter in a hotel.

There are many other examples of these types of words, such as:

• Love: the owner of a pet or something that is owned by him.
• Love: from the verb to love.
• Salt: from the verb to leave.
• Salt: the famous sodium chloride, which is used as a topping for meals.

In an example, we could say:

• Salt from here right now, they are waiting for you in class.
• Put a little more Salt in the steak, which has been a bit bland.