The brain spider

Saipan is a linguistic crossroads, and a student of English asked me to list some words that sound the same but which have different spellings and meanings. That’s a big deal, given that most of us probably write from phonetic memory. This steers us into the maw of computerized word-checking where we get green flags for the wrong word. Yes indeed, “Spell Czech is grate!”

English is full of these sneaky words. In fact, as I just discovered, it’s so full of these words that there’s not enough space in this column to list them. Yikes!

Indeed, once I unleashed the language spider on a random crawl through my brain, the sneaky words just kept on popping up. The project hijacked my entire day. So I beamed the brain spider into my editor’s brain, too; it’s my way of sticking it to the Man.

The list, as it stands now, is 131 words. It will surely creep up over the next few days as the brain spiders keep crawling, and they’ll do that, whether we want them to or not.

I’ll print the first part of the list today. Then I’ll either publish the second half in this space next week or maybe I’ll just put it on my website. I haven’t decided yet.

Incidentally, I’m excluding proper nouns (e.g. Maine, Gayle, etc.). And this is just a mental exercise; recourse to a dictionary or reference would probably uncover thousands of these sneaky words, but that would take the fun out of it. This is brain-spider turf, not an exhaustive list.

So here we go:
1).Here, hear
2).Their, there
3). Plane, plain; I’ve flown some plain planes.
4). Two, too, to; the infamous sneaky triple
5). Hare, hair; “harebrained”
6). Great, grate
7). Do, dew, due
8). Write, right, rite; “rite of passage”
9). Role, roll
10). Male, mail
11). Mall, maul
12). Your, you’re; simple but often messed up
13). Bore, boar. Also: bored, board.
14). Hi, high
15). Piece, peace
16). Tail, tale
17). Aye, I, eye
18). Son, sun
19). Pee, pea; a distinction that fueled many a joke in second grade.
20). So, sew
21). Bare, bear; third grade for these jokes.
22). Night, knight
23). In, inn
24). Wood, would
25). Hey, hay; “hey” isn’t much of a word so maybe this shouldn’t count.
26). Where, ware, wear; “warehouse”
27). Pare, pair, pear
28). See, sea
29). Nose, knows
30). Pail, pale
31). Blue, blew
32). Dear, deer
33). Fourth, forth; these two are easy to mix up.
34). Main, mane
35). Rode, road; these seem to go together nicely.
36). Lode, load; the “Mother Lode” started the gold rush.
37). Wry, rye
38). Vise, vice
39). Know, no
40). Pain, pane
41). Whole, hole
42). Moat, mote
43). Might, mite
44). Four, fore, for
45). Sine, sign; can you “cosine” for a loan?
46). Wine, whine
47). Bee, be
48). Lead, led
49). Red, read
50). Wet, whet; “whet the appetite”
51). Toe, tow; “toe the line”
52). Not, knot
53). Need, knead, kneed
54). Doe, dough
55). Days, daze
56). Die, dye
57). Witch, which
58). Principal, principle; this one is tricky.
59). Capitol, capital; one squanders the other!
60). Damn, dam
61). Flea, flee
62). Gait, gate
63). Tare, tear
64). Wait, weight
65). Site, sight, cite; a very insidious triple-sneak.
That will do it for today. By now the spider has been implanted in your brain, too; it’s my way of sticking it to the Reader.