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From an instructional perspective, homophones, homographs, and homonyms have often presented obstacles rather than opportunities. The common tendency is to throw Lip one's hands when faced with the seeming illogic and inconsistencies of some words that are spelled differently but pronounced the same, others that are spelled the same but pronounced differently, and still others that are spelled the same, pronounced the same, but mean different things.
This column focuses on the opportunities. Understanding and exploring these categories of words may not only facilitate spelling development but vocabulary and comprehension competencies as well. How do we talk about diese types of words? How do we help students learn them? How does exploration of these types of words support comprehension?
These three categories of words share the Greek root homos, meaning "same," so a little structural analysis suggests homophone refers to same sound, homograph refers to same writing, and homonym refers to same name. This analysis gets us fairly close to the types of words to which these terms refer, but even dictionary definitions still leave some fuzziness around the edges where these terms overlap, so we'll sort through the definitional issues first and use the simpler, more straightforward definitions that have emerged in our field over the years:
Homophones: Words that have the same sound but differ in spelling and in meaning. Examples: pain in the side/window pane; a dark night/a knight in shining armor; raise the issue/rays of sunlight/raze the buildings to the ground.
Homographs: Words that differ in sound and meaning but have the same spelling. Examples: a clove on the wing/I dove...