HOMOGRAPHS

A list by John Higgins of English words which have two pronunciations but one spelling

Contents

• Definitions
• Double-stress words
• Stress homographs
• Words ending in -ate
• Words ending in -ment
• Voicing distinctions
• -ed adjectives
• "True" homographs
• A tonemic homograph
• Homographs from abbreviations
• Homographic place names
• Phonetic transcription key
• Alphabetical list of all homographs

Definitions

Not everybody uses this set of definitions, though they would be accepted by the majority of trained linguistic scholars. In wider usage (reflected in many dictionaries) the term homograph includes what I have here called homonyms and polysemes, i.e. words of different meaning but the same spelling and pronunciation, such as right and fly. For those people the term for what I am calling homographs is heteronyms, a term not much used by professional linguists. (Heterophone would be a much more appropriate description since what is different is the sound, not the name.)

Homographs are a minor problem for anyone learning English as a foreign language, but a much greater problem for anyone trying to design a foolproof text-to-speech algorithm for a computer. If one pronunciation is far commoner than the other (as with the word second, for instance) the programmer will probably ignore the exceptional case. Where both pronunciations occur frequently, as with object or read, the programmer must try to find contextual markers on which to base a rule.

The source of this list was the Roger Mitton machine-readable version of the 1974 Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary, incorporating Mitton's additions. The dictionary contained 537 words which had more than one pronunciation listed. Some of these were simply words with varying pronunciations and no shift of meaning, such as breeches, dowsing, and piano or varying stress patterns such as bow-wow, bye-bye, and fricassee, and these were discarded. There were also four strong-form/weak-form pairs, a, an, to and 'cos (it is not clear why these were the only such pairs to emerge), three cases of abbreviations matching ordinary words, am (before noon), in (inch), and no (number), and one case of a loan word overlapping with an established English word, real (presumably referring to the old Spanish coin rather than the football team).

The remaining 488 words plus about seventy more which were not in the dictionary have been classified into relevant groupings and are listed below. The spellings and phonetic transcriptions are mainly as they appear in the dictionary, though I have used Gimsonian IPA symbols rather than the Alvey transcription that Mitton had to use so that he could store his dictionary as a text file. There is also a complete alphabetical checklist of homographs which you can consult if looking for a particular word.

Double stress

A number of double-stress words showed up. These are words whose pronunciation varies with their position in the phrase, front-stressed before a noun and end-stressed when final in the phrase, though without substantial change of meaning. (Compare "an overnight bag" with "Are you staying overnight?")

There are a number of other English words which behave in the same way, such as afternoon, bamboo, downhill, downstairs, inside, overseas, princess, routine, sardine, underground, upstairs, together with many compound adjectives (easy-going, home-made), all nationality adjectives ending in -ese, numbers from 13 to 99 (apart from multiples of 10), and many place names such as Bombay, Hong Kong, New York, and Torquay. In these other cases the dictionary did not record both stress patterns. Probably only the word overall (with its secondary meaning of an item of clothing) should be counted as a homograph, since in the other cases the change of pronunciation signals only a syntactic feature rather than a shift of meaning.

Stress homographs

The next distinct group, which was by far the largest, was the set of nouns (or adjectives) with front-stress against verbs (or adjectives) with end-stress with 288 words altogether. One suspects that in a good many cases the distinction is unnecessary for intelligibility; the set of -port words (export, import, transport) for instance are often heard with front stress even when being used as verbs, and I have heard on air the word increase stressed both ways as noun and both ways as verb. In thirty cases (listed in the table below) there is a large difference in meaning and use between the two spoken forms while in other cases the difference is more syntactic than lexical.

In most cases any adjective senses ally themselves with the noun and exhibit front stress, but in one case, content, the adjective sense is end-stressed and relates more closely to the verb than to the noun. The adjective compact seems to occur both front-stressed and end-stressed with no change of meaning, although the noun is always front-stressed and the verb always end-stressed. Similarly, the noun complex is always front-stressed, though the adjective seems to vary freely between front stress and end stress. Perhaps the most memorable example of its occurrence with end stress is in the line from the Tom Lehrer song about Oedipus Rex, "You must have heard of his complex complex." (The force of the metre here tends to give both words end-stress.) All the other adjectives in the full list, absent, abstract, compound, converse, frequent, perfect, present, quadruple and second, were front-stressed.

Several problems occur with the prefix re-, for instance in the words recall and resent,where usage is inconsistent and is probably changing. In general the prefix re- often has the potential to enter homographs as one returns to earlier meanings of the base form. Thus we talk of reform /rɪ'fɔm/ in the church or the legal system, but a sculptor might reform /,ri'fɔm/ a clay model; you can make a remark /rɪ'mɑk/ in speech, while a teacher may remark /,ri'mɑk/ a contested exam paper. (This distinction is sometimes signalled by including a hyphen in the spelling for the second meanings, re-form and re-mark, so I have not included them in the list.)

There are four cases needing further comment.

• The word entrance, while looking like a stress homograph, should perhaps be counted as a true homograph, since the noun sense derives from the verb enter while the verb sense derives from the noun trance.
• The word deserts exists as two different nouns, one front-stressed meaning 'dry places', and the other end-stressed meaning 'what one deserves' and occurring usually in the fixed phrase 'get one's just deserts'. This second use has a homophone in the word desserts meaning 'sweet courses', which gives rise to many spelling errors and headline puns.
• The word process exists as a noun with front-stress and as two different verbs, one with front-stress with a meaning linked to the noun process and one with end-stress with a meaning linked to the noun procession.
• Similarly the word second exists as two separate verbs, one with front stress meaning to support a proposal at a formal meeting, and one with end stress meaning to send somebody away on temporary duty. The second use is fairly unusual, being mainly confined to military and civil service contexts.

The meanings of the thirty special cases are as follows:

This is the full list of 291 words:

There were two interesting words which reversed the trend of this set, words where the front-stressed form was the (3rd person singular) verb and a form with stress later in the word was the (plural) noun:

Return to contents

-ATE words

Another large group was the set of words ending with -ate where the noun/adjective sense uses a schwa while the verb sense uses a full /eɪ/ diphthong. There were 42 of these (or 69 counting the inflectional variants). All of them retain the same stress pattern whether noun/adjective or verb except for alternate and consummate which, like analyses and diagnoses and unlike the other stress homographs, puts the stress at the front for the verb and later for the noun/adjective. (See Higgins 1984 for a discussion of the phenomenon.)

Return to contents

-MENT words

A similar but smaller group was the set of words ending with -ment where the noun sense uses a schwa while the verb sense uses a full vowel. There were five of these (ten including the inflectional variants).

Voicing

Two more small groups could also be identified and separated. The first was the nine -ed adjectives with matching verb past tenses:

Not in the dictionary with both pronunciations but behaving similarly is the word beloved, which has three syllables as a noun or attributive adjective, but only two as a passive participle. ("I loved and was beloved again": Byron.) This dictionary listed wicked only as a two-syllable adjective, but the full OED also lists a one-syllable pronunciation, meaning "having a wick". Similarly this dictionary has rugged only as a two-syllable adjective, but the full OED has rug as a verb, which you might use in "We don't need another rug; the room is well rugged already."

The other group was the set of French loan words whose Anglicised plural is not represented in the spelling. Only three were recorded in the lists, but one expects there must be more.

"True" homographs

That left the following set of 93 homographs (146 if all the inflectional variants are counted) arising from a variety of causes. This section of the list includes those words like moped and wound which are most typical of what we have in mind when we think of homographs. These include a number which were not in the original dictionary list.

I have included several which contrast an ordinary word with a place name: the words nice, angers, lens and tours all contrasting with French cities, trier with a German city, reading with an English town, scone with a Scottish village and palace, wear with an English river, tangier with a Moroccan port and natal with a South African province. Like job/Job, august/August, and polish/Polish they are distinguished by capitalisation and would only be homographs in sentence-initial position or in all-upper-case writing. The word romance as a verb meaning to pay court to would most likely have the schwa in the first syllable, while romance meaning a piece of fiction could have either schwa or a full diphthong, and Romance as a description of languages derived from Latin would almost certainly have the full diphthong. The surname Brazil is usually front-stressed (as in Angela Brazil the author) while the name of the country is end-stressed. The girl's name Nancy is another homograph in contrast with a French city. The word dove is a homograph for speakers of Amercian English but not for the British for whom the past tense of dive is dived. In four cases of recent loan words, pate, rose, resume and attaches,the homograph is disambiguated by retaining the French accents in the English spelling. The contrast between the two-syllable and three-syllable pronunciations of evening may not be consistently made by all RP speakers, though all would recognise it, I believe.

Many of these words are particularly popular with crossword setters since they allow for the creation of misleading cryptic clues. (See below for examples.)

Quite: a tonemic homograph

Abbreviations

Place names

Another special case is place names. In England there are three small towns called Gillingham. The one in Kent is pronounced /'ʤɪlɪŋəm/ while the ones in Dorset and Norfolk are pronounced /'gɪlɪŋəm/. Unfortunately only people who live locally to one of these towns (as I do) would be likely to know this and maintain the distinction consistently. There are four communities called Plaistow, pronounced /'pleɪstəʊ/ in Derby, /'plɑstəʊ/ in Kent or Essex, and /'plæstəʊ/ in Sussex. Alford is pronounced /'ɑfəd if you are referring to the Scottish one or /'ɔlfəd if you mean the English one. Lagos in Nigeria is pronounced /'leɪgɒs/ while Lagos in Portugal is usually / 'lɑgɒs/. A similar case is Berkeley in California, pronounced /'bɜklɪ/ (by RP speakers) or /'brklɪ/, contrasted with Berkeley in the west of England, pronounced /'bɑklɪ/. There is also the case of the Kentucky Derby, pronounced /'dɜrbɪ/, and the British horse race, the Derby at Epsom, pronounced /'dɑbɪ/. I suspect there are a good many more cases of pairs of places in different countries with the same spelling and different pronunciations.

Number of elks, perhaps, surrounding a wild animal's lair. (8)
Answer: DEADENER (something which numbs, DEER—elks perhaps— round A DEN—wild animal's lair).
(26 April 2006).

Stagger, describing Birmingham area. (8)
Answer: ASTONISH (Aston-ish, Aston being a part of Birmingham.)
(8 June 2006).

One very reliable tugboat (5, 2, 8)
Answer: TOWER OF STRENGTH
(19 June 2006).

Difference in sequence (3)
Answer: ROW
(21 June 2006).

Energy to get closer (3)
Answer: ZIP (something which closes, as well as energy)
(2 July 2005).

Nice fellow councillor blocking attempt to obtain novel (10, 5)
Answer:FRENCHMAN'S CREEK (title of a novel by Daphne du Maurier, a Nice fellowis a FRENCHMAN, CR abbreviation for Councillor in the word SEEK,attempt).
(27 July 2006).

Polish brigade involve one in runners on board. (10)
Answer: CHAIRWOMEN (Women who run boards, CHARWOMEN are the brigade of polishers, surrounding 1).
(25 January 2007).

Less sensitive issue of magazine. (10)
Answer: NUMBER
(22 October 2008).

Object to having ice-cream not guacamole for starters. (5)
Answer: THING (Object, first letters of the next five words.)
(31 July 2009)

References and acknowledgements:

Higgins, J (1984). "It or ate; a note on the pronunciation of words ending in -ate.", ELT Journal 38, 1, p. 50-51.

My thanks to Clay Stabler for suggesting preposition, to Eduardo Parra for agape, Peter Reitan for bustier, and to Daniel Asimov and Charles Jeffery for the extremely specialised homographs of periodic and unionized.

Vowels	Keyword	Transcribed		Consonants	Keyword	Transcribed
i	key	ki		p	pea	pi
ɪ	pit	pɪt		b	bee	bi
e	pet	pet		t	toe	təʊ
æ	pat	pæt		d	doe	dəʊ
ɑ	hard	hɑd		k	cap	kæp
ɒ	pot	pɒt		g	get	get
ɔ	raw	rɔ		f	fat	fæt
ʊ	put	pʊt		v	vet	vet
u	coo	ku		Ɵ	thin	Ɵɪn
ʌ	hut	hʌt		ð	then	ðen
3	cur	k3		s	sack	sæk
ə	about/mother	əbaʊt/mʌðə		z	zoo	zu
eɪ	bay	beɪ		ʃ	ship	ʃɪp
aɪ	buy	baɪ		ʒ	measure	meʒə
ɔɪ	boy	bɔɪ		h	hide	haɪd
əʊ	go	gəʊ		m	man	mæn
aʊ	cow	kaʊ		n	no	nəʊ
ɪə	peer	pɪə		ŋ	sing	sɪŋ
eə	pair	peə		l	lie	laɪ
ʊə	poor	pʊə		r	red	red
				j	year	jɪə
				w	wet	wet
				ʧ	chin	ʧɪn
				ʤ	judge	ʤʌʤ

Alphabetical list of 563 English homographs

absent
abstract
abstracts             
abuse                   
abuses 
accent   
accents  
addict                 
addicts                
advert                  
adverts                
advocate                      
advocates                    
affix                     
affixes                 
afternoon              
agape
agglomerate                 
aggregate                     
aggregates                   
allies                    
alloy                      
alloys                    
ally                       
alternate  
am                    
analyses 
amgers/Angers
animate                        
annex                     
annexes                 
appropriate                
approximate                
articulate                  
aspirate                      
aspirates                    
associate                    
associates                  
attribute              
attribute             
august/August 
axes 
aye  

baas 
bamboo 
bases 
bass 
baths 
beloved 
blessed  
bow 
bowed 
bower 
bowers 
bowing 
bows 
buffet 
buffets  

cave
certificate                 
certificates               
cleanly 
close                    
closes 
coax 
collect                  
collects                
combine                              
combines                            
commune                               
communes                             
compact                              
compacts                            
compliment                 
compliments               
compound                            
compounds                          
compress                             
compresses                         
concert                               
concerts                             
conduct                              
confederate                
confederates              
confines                            
conflict                            
conflicts                          
conglomerate              
conglomerates            
conscript                          
conscripts                        
console                              
consoles                            
consort                               
consorts                             
consummate                    
content                              
contents                            
contest                              
contests                            
contract                            
contracts                          
contrast                            
contrasts                          
converse                              
convert                               
converts                             
convict                              
convicts                            
coordinate                 
coordinates               
corps  
co-star               
co-stars              
counterbalance                 
counterbalances              
crabbed                  
crooked                   
cursed  

decoy                            
decoys                                
decrease                              
decreases                           
defect                                
defects                              
defile                                
defiles                              
degenerate                 
degenerates               
delegate                      
delegates                    
deliberate                  
denier
descant                              
descants                            
desert                                 
deserts                               
desolate                      
diagnoses
dictate                               
dictates                             
diffuse
digest                                
digests                              
discard                                
discards                              
discharge                            
discharges                         
discount                             
discounts                           
discourse                              
discourses                           
dodocument                
documents              
does
dogged  
dove (US)                  
downhill
downstairs
drawer
drawers
duplicate                   
duplicates                 

elaborate                    
entrance                              
entrances                           
escort                                  
escorts                                
essay                                    
essays                                  
estimate                      
estimates     
evening               
excess                                  
excise                                 
excuse                
excuses             
expatriate                 
expatriates               
exploit                              
exploits                            
export                                 
exports                               
extract                              
extracts                            

ferment                                
ferments                              
filtrate                             
filtrates                           
finish
flower
flowers
forbear
forbears
forearm
forearms
fragment                             
fragments                           
frequent                             
furrier

gallant
gill
gills
glower
glowers
graduate                     
graduates                   
grave
graves

house 
housewife

impact                                 
impacts                               
implant                
implants               
implement                
implements              
import                                  
imports                                
impress                                
impresses                            
imprint                               
imprints                             
inincarnate                         
incense                                
incline                               
inclines                             
incorporate                     
increase                               
increases                            
indent                                 
indents                               
inebriate                  
inebriates                
initiate                    
initiates                  
inland
inlay                                  
inlays                                
insert                                  
inserts                                
inset                                  
insets                                
inside
instinct                            
insult                                 
insults
inter                               
interchange                      
interchanges                   
interdict                           
interdicts                         
intern                                   
interns                                 
intimate                    
intimates                  
introvert                            
introverts                          
invalid
inverse                                  
invite                                  
invites                                

jagged                
job/Job

layer
layers
lead
leading
leads    
learned 		 
lens/Lens
lied
lip-read
live
lives
lower                 
lowered                 
lowering               
lowers                   

mandate                 
manes
minute
misconduct                         
misprint                             
misprints                           
misread
misuse                  
misuses  
moderate                    
moderates                  
moped
mouth                      
mouths  
mow                        
mowed                     
mowing                  
mows   
multiply  		

Nancy
natal/Natal 
nice/Nice
no                   
number

object                                 
objects                               
ornament                  
ornaments                
outside
overall
overbid                               
overbids                             
overcharge                          
overcharges                       
overflow                             
overflows                           
overhang                              
overhangs                            
overhaul                              
overhauls                            
overhead
overlap                               
overlaps                             
overlay                               
overlays                             
overnight
overprint                           
overprints                         
overseas
overstrain                         
overthrow                            
overthrows                          
overweight
overwork                              

palled
palling
pasty
pate
path
patois 
peer
peers
pension
pensions
perfect                                 
perfume                                 
perfumes                               
permit                                   
permits                                 
pervert                                  
perverts                                
polish/Polish
poll
polls
pontificate              
pontificates              
prayer
prayers
precipitate                
predicate                    
predicates                  
prefix                                
prefixes 
preposition  
prepositions                         
presage                               
presages                            
present                                
presents                              
princess
proceeds                               
process                                 
processed                              
processes                             
processing                            
produce                                
progress                               
progresses                           
project                               
projects                             
prolapse                              
prolapses                           
prospect                              
prospects                            
prostrate                            
protest                                
protests                              
purport                                  
pussy
put
puts
putting

quadruple                             
quadruples                           
quadruplicate            
quadruplicates      
quite    
 
ragged   
rampage                               
rampages
read                            
reading/Reading
real
rebel                                    
rebels                                  
rebound                               
rebounds    
recall
recalls                          
recap                                   
recapped                               
recapping                             
recaps                                 
record                                   
records                                 
re-count                             
re-counts                           
refill                                  
refills                                
refit                                   
refits                                 
refund                                  
refunds                                
refuse  
reg                                
regenerate                 
rehash                                  
rehashes                              
reincarnate                
reject                                 
rejects                               
rejoin                                 
rejoined                              
rejoining                            
rejoins                               
relay                                   
relaying                               
relays                                 
relays                                  
remake                                 
remakes                               
remount                               
remounts                             
rendezvous  
replay                                 
replays                               
reprint                               
reprints                             
reproof
reproofs
reread	  
rerun
reruns
resent
resume
retake                                 
retakes                               
rethink                                
rethinks                              
reticulate                 
retread                                
retreads                              
rewrite                                
rewrites 
romance/Romance                             
routed
routine
routing
row                        
rowed                     
rowing                  
rows      
rugged           

sake
sardine	  
scone/Scone
second                                  
seconded                              
seconding                             
seconds                                
segment                                
segments                              
separate                        
separates                      
sewer 
sewers 
shower 
showers 
skier 
skiers 
slough 
sloughs 
sow 
sows 
staffs/Staffs 
subcontract                      
subcontracts                     
subject                               
subjects                             
subordinate                 
subordinates               
supplement                 
supplements               
supply
surmise                                 
surmises                              
survey                                   
surveys                                
suspect                                
suspects                              
swinging
syndicate                    
syndicates 

tarry 
tear 
tears 
tier 
tiers 
tinged 
tinging 
torment                                 
torments   
tours/Tours                            
tower 
towers 
transfer                              
transfers                             
transplant                          
transplants                        
transport                             
transports                           
trier/Trier
triplicate                  
triplicates               
	
undercharge                         
undercharges                      
undercut                              
underestimate           
underestimates         
underground 
underlay                              
underline                            
underlines                          
undertaking                        
undertakings                      
unused 
upgrade                               
upgrades                             
uplift                                 
upset                                   
upsets                            
upstairs
use                      
used                    
uses 

valence 
valences  

wear/Wear
wicked 
wind 
winding 
winds 
worsted 
wound

This page published by John Higgins and last updated 31 January 2010.

Return to contents