Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

Some words do change over time—but slowly, slowly.   Words like "scuba", "laser" and "radar", which used to be spelled as acronyms ("SCUBA") are now treated as normal words.   Words such as "through" and "bight" are no longer pronounced anything like they used to be, but their spelling (in English, at least) is retained.   I've read that in a few words there has been a curious migration of the initial 'n', so that what used to be "a norange" is now spelled "an orange", and very few ever hear that it was ever otherwise.

But off-hand I can't think of a case where two homonyms have merged.   I would guess that's because they still have separate meanings so their different spellings is useful.   Your "to" and "too" is a good example; it'd be one thing if their meanings were so close that the distinction is difficult to remember, but enough careful writers are around to complain about their misuse that I agree with Grant:   I don't see any sign that the distinction is going away.

What probably is happening is that the internet is making available to us the thoughts (so to speak) of a good many more writers, some of them pretty bad; so we're seeing a lot more careless writing.   I don't think that will lead to the degradation of what is thought of as good writing.   It might lead in the other direction, to greater emphasis on good writing and therefore to better writing in general.   But I wouldn't bet on it.

Wait, did I misuse "homonym"?   There are a) words that sound alike but are spelled differently ("to", "too" and "two"); there are also b) words that are pronounced alike and are spelled the same too (yet are nevertheless different words, such as "bear" and "bear").   A and B are referred to by two different terms; I wrote "homonym" in my previous post meaning group A, but Glenn is talking about B.   Which is which?

Oh, wait, I remember:   Homophones are words that sound alike; homonyms are spelled alike also.   So I did misuse the term; sorry, all, I got confused.

Or Greek.   I took two years of college Greek (I started out as a religion major) and still read the NT, sort of.   But that didn't save me from confusing this one.

In case anyone cares, the homo- prefix is from a Greek prefix meaning "same"; it's where we get "homogenous" and "homologue".   (The homo- prefix in Greek is unrelated to the noun homo in Latin, which I think means simply "man", as in Homo sapiens, "thinking man".   But I don't know Latin well; someone may correct me and I'll take it quietly.)   The -onym suffix is from the Greek word for "name", and -phone is from "voice", or metaphorically any sound.   A homonym is a word that is spelled the same as another; a homophone is a word that's pronounced like another, even though they're spelled differently.

JerryP already gave us an example of homophones in "to" and "too".   Anyone familiar with English will be able to think of many others. Just for fun I'll toss in "merry" and "marry" (and "Mary", if you like); they're pronounced differently in some parts of the English-speaking world, but in the American midwest, where I grew up, they're all pronounced alike.

A true homonym is a word that is spelled like another but has a different etymology, eg "stalk".   Personally I'd say "pole" is another example, although you may insist that "pole" and "Pole" are not the same spelling.

Useless factoid: If anyone ever complains "Wait a minute—it says here that the Greek word phonos is 'murder', not 'voice' or 'sound'!", he's partly right.   In Greek there are two vowels that we transliterate to an 'o' in English, the omikron (ο) and the omega (ω).   The Greek word for "murder" is φόνος; the word for "voice" (or "sound") is φωνή.