Hello, my name is Nina. I am the world’s worst speller. I will be suffering from this until the day I die … or stop writing … whichever comes first. My family thinks it’s hysterical that I went into this line of work.
But that’s not what this post is about.
When I was in 7th grade we had an assignment to make a list of as many homonyms as we could discover. (Words that sound alike, but are spelled differently). I am a competitive cuss and I went through the dictionary scouring for words that sounded the same. I had a reeeeally long list when I went into school the next morning proudly passing in my homework, confident I’d have the most. But it wasn’t to be … David Zobel had the most! How dare he? Of course he was the state spelling bee champion that year, perhaps that had something to do with it. He had a humungus vocabulary. I came in second. Man, did that stick in my craw!
Anyway, this has always bothered me. Since then (and I’m not kidding) I keep an eye out for homonyms. They fascinate me. Well, now that I’m writing I’m finding words that I never knew had homonyms. I’m not sure I want to tell you I’ve discovered them because I spell them soooo wrong the poor online dictionary has to offer me several spellings in hopes that one of the words is the one I attempted. Anyway, here are 13 interesting pairings I’ve found recently:
1. elude: to avoid
allude: to refer to casually
I would never elude this guy!
2. imminent: likely to occur any moment
eminent: high in station or rank
(The way this guy raises my blood pressure, I have no doubt a heart attack is imminent.)
3. affect (v): to have an influence
effect (n): something brought about by a cause
(The lighting in this picture is a nice effect)
4. immersion: to dunk
emersion: something (usually a celestial body) coming out of an eclipse.
(Baths require total immersion.)
5. aluminate: a salt of the aluminum form
illuminate: to brighten with light
(It’s important to properly illuminate your subject.)
6. announce: to make it known publically
enounce: to utter or pronounce
(I’d like to announce that I lurve tattoos!)
7. illusive: based on or having the nature of an illusion
elusive: hard to express or define
(The right description for this guy is elusive.)
8. wonder: to think or speculate
wander: to ramble without purpose9. utter: to speak
(Sometimes a man’s gotta wander nekkid.)
9. utter: to speak
udder: part of a cow
(Don’t utter a word honey, I’ll make it all better.)
10. excess: exceeding something else
access: the right to enter or approach
(When it comes to a man, there’s no such thing as an excess of water.)
11. accept (v): to take or receive
except (prep): with the exclusion
(Men are better one at a time except
when they come in a group like this.)
12. bear: to hold up or support or bring forth as in children
bare: nekkid
(Of course it’s so much better when a man bares it all)
13. vain: without purpose
vein: blood vessels
vane: blade, plate or sail
(I searched in vain for a more lickable picture than this.)
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