Fun Illustrations Easily Explain Homophones and Homographs

Fun Illustrations Visualize of the “Same” Words With Different Meanings

by ShovavaOctober 2, 2020

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Language lovers will be thrilled to know that illustrator Bruce Worden is back to regularly updating his popular website Homophones, Weakly. Since 2011, Worden has been illustrating homophones, which are two or more words having the same pronunciation, but different spelling and meaning. Though the illustrations tapered off after 2016, Worden has been quite productive this year, particularly as he's focusing on a new category—homographs.

What is a homograph? A homograph is a pair—or group—of words that are spelled the same but have different meanings. And, according to some dictionaries, they should also have different pronunciations. Worden began revealing his illustrated homographs in March, stating, “I've been keeping a list of them as long as I've had my list of homophones, and I think it's finally time to draw some of them!”

The renewed activity on the website comes a year after Worden's book Homophones Visualized was published by Chronicle Books. At over 200 pages, it features 100 pairs or groups of words and is perfect for language-lovers, grammar enthusiasts, kids, and anyone learning English as a second language.

We're excited to see more new work from Worden as he explores the world of homographs. Luckily, if his list is as long as the one for homophones, he'll be busy for quite awhile.