Homonyms, or multiple meaning words, are words that share the same spelling and the same pronunciation but have different meanings. For example, bear.
- A bear (the animal) can bear (tolerate) very cold temperatures.
- The driver turned left (opposite of right) and left (departed from) the main road.
Homographs are words that are spelled the same, but have different meanings and are often pronounced differently as well. Some examples of homographs are:
- bass as in fish vs bass as in music
- bow as in arrow vs bow as in bending or taking a bow at the end of a performance
- close as in next to vs close as in shut the door
- desert as in dry climate vs desert as in leaving alone.
Homophones
First let’s tackle homophones. The root –phone means “sound,” as it does in telephone and phonics. So homophones are words that sound the same, such as doe a deer, a female deer, and dough that you bake into bread.Homographs
Next, let’s do homographs. The root -graph means “write,” just as it does in autograph and telegraph. So homographs are words that are written the same—that is, words that have the same spelling. For example, there’s the verb tears, as in “Squiggly tears the speeding ticket in two,” and the noun tears, meaning the salty drops of water that ran down your cheek when you watched the movie Inside Out. They’re homographs because they’re both spelled T-E-A-R-S.Homonyms
Now we can bring in homonyms. The –onym root means “name.” You also hear it in anonymous, which literally means “without a name,” and of course, in the words synonym and antonym. Homonyms are words that have the same name; in other words, they sound the same and they’re spelled the same.For example, pen meaning the writing instrument, and pen meaning an enclosure for an animal, are homonyms. They have the same pronunciation, “pen,” and they’re both spelled P-E-N. To put it another way, homonyms are both homophones and homographs! You can even illustrate this with a cute little Venn diagram of two overlapping circles. One circle contains homophones; the other circle contains homographs; and the football in the middle contains homonyms.
So homophones sound the same; homographs are spelled the same; and homonyms do both. That’s all you need to know.
At this point, if you already knew the difference between the three words, you might be saying, “Now hold on just one minute! Homographs are words that are spelled the same, and don’t sound the same! Homophones are words that sound the same, but aren’t spelled the same!”
This is where my fingers and thumbs analogy comes in. Sure, when somebody says, “Ow! I cut my finger!” you probably figure they cut their pointer, tall man, ring finger, or pinky. That’s because if they’d cut their thumb, they’d probably have been more specific and said, “Ow! I cut my thumb!”
Even so, you agree that a thumb is a finger—a special finger, but still a finger. In the same way, it makes more sense to say that pen and pen are special homophones than to say they’re not homophones. And by the same reasoning, it’s simpler to think of pen and pen as special homographs than say they’re not homographs.
Of course, if you really want to, you can write the definitions of homophone, homonym, and homograph so that there’s no overlap, but I suspect that definitions like that are part of the reason for people’s confusion.
references :
https://www.spellingcity.com/homophones-and-homonyms.html
https://www.vocabulary.com/articles/chooseyourwords/homonym-homophone-homograph/
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-difference-between-homophones-homonyms-and-homographs-2015-9?IR=T&r=US&IR=T
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