To ace your English class, there are thousands of words that you need to understand including the meaning, spelling, and pronunciation. There are many fun ways to learn words. One of them is by learning homophones. When you master the homophones word list below, you would not confuse to choose the correct words in your sentences. Then who knows learning homophones can help you to get an A in English or win the spelling bee?
Table of Contents
What is homophone
The word is derived from Greek that is ‘homo-‘ (same) and ‘-phone’ (voice or sound). So, the literal meaning is the same sound.
In detail, homophones are words that have similar pronunciations but are different in spellings and meanings. Compared to other languages, English has the most homophones word list in the world. It is because the words are mostly borrowed from other languages, and that is why the pronunciation of some words does not resemble the spelling.
Though they have similar pronunciations, if you listen more carefully, you will find some of the pairs below are slightly sounded out differently. They are called near homophones and the examples are except-accept, worn-warn, wary-weary, and more. Can you spot any other near homophones on the list below?
Common homophones words list
| accept-except | for-four | pause-paws-pours-pores |
| affect-effect | here-hear | pea-pee |
| aloud-allowed than-then | hi-high | principle-principal |
| ate-eight | hour-our | read-red |
| bear-bare | I-eye | read-reed |
| blue-blew | I’ll-aisle-isle | real-reel |
| brake-break | it’s-its | right-write |
| buy-by-bye | knight-night | see-sea |
| capital-capitol | know-no | son-sun |
| complement-compliment | lie-lay | steal-steel |
| cell-sell | mail-male | there-their-they’re |
| dear-deer | meat-meet | to-too-two |
| dew-do-due | moose-mousse | wait-weight |
| die-dye | morning-mourning | weather-whether |
| eight-ate | need-knead-kneed | which-witch |
| flew-flue-flue | one-won | who’s-whose |
| flour-flower | pair-pare-pear | you’re-your |
Why and how to learn homophones
After knowing what homophones are, you might wonder why you should learn them. Besides helping you to recognize more words as well as their meanings, the pairs are good for puns and raps. Crosswords puzzle also often use homophones to deceive players to fall into the wrong words.
In literary works like poetry, you can also find many homophone pairs since they are beautiful to read indeed.
Besides finding them practically in texts, students and parents can also learn the pairs through songs, online sites, and book with homophones word list. Yet only looking at the list will not help much. It helps to say the words, but not the meanings. Here are a few exciting activities to learn homophones:
- Learn by reading the sentences that contain the words and guess the meaning based on the context. You can also make another sentence based on your understanding.
- Write down homophones that you hear in rap songs or puns
- Play spelling games with flashcards that have only homophone meanings written. The ones with the most well-spelled words are the winner.
- Take a Spelling Test with our app using lists containing homophones words.
Conclusion
Those are fifty pairs in the most common homophones word list to learn by students. Each pair is pronounced the same but has a very different meaning. Can you guess the difference between each pair? If you do, try to make at least one sentence for each word in the list. Then you can see the context and meaning of them.
There are many more examples besides the ones stated in the list. Please say some that are not on the list and make your friends guess. There are also more advanced homophones that you can explore on the internet. Try to use it in sentences and create some fun puns!
