Homophones are words that have exactly the same sound (pronunciation) but different meanings and (usually) spelling.

For example, the following two words have the same sound, but different meanings and spelling:

hour
our

In the next example, the two words have the same sound and spelling, but different meanings:

bear (the animal)
bear (to carry)

Usually homophones are in groups of two (our, hour), but very occasionally they can be in groups of three (to, too, two) or even four. If we take our "bear" example, we can add another word to the group"

bare (naked)
bear (the animal)
bear (to tolerate)

"Our bear cannot bear to be bare at any hour."

The word homophone is made from two combining forms: homo- (from the Greek word "homos", meaning "same" -phone (from the Greek word "phone", meaning "voice" or "sound" You will see many other English words using one or other of these combining forms.

The following list of 70 groups of homophones contains only the most common homophones, using relatively well-known words. These are headwords only. No inflections (such as third person singular "s" or noun plurals) are included.

NB: In a few cases, a third homophone, although possible, has not been included for simplicity. Different varieties and accents of English may produce variations in some of these pronunciations. The homophones listed here are based on British English.

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