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In a on-line conversation, someone asked if buses or busses was the correct spelling of the plural of bus. Another quickly looked it up and said either (though I don't know if he pronounced that I-ther or E-ther) was correct. He added that that was rare in English. I responded that the choice may be either a gray area or grey area. I can find neither a name for this class of word pairings - words that are both synonym and homophone - nor can I find a list. I proffer synophone as a name. I had the small-minded thought of throwing a list in the commenter's virtual face, but that would be unnecessarily abusive - or abussive? I would appreciate both comments and examples.
I don't think I have anything useful to suggest about what to name these things, but if we're talking about words that can be spelled in different ways, I can think of other examples. "Gases"/"gasses" is another, to go with yours, for example. And I have another list, too.
I suspect they come from the word being standardized on a spelling that is contradictory to a rule that sprang up about the same time, or maybe later. Here's the rule I learned in elementary school about doubling the consonant at the end of word, before adding a suffix: If the word ends in a short vowel and a single consonant and the last syllable has the emphasis, you double the consonant before adding the suffix; if any of those things fail, the consonant stays single.
Here's how that works out: First, if the word ends in more than one consonant, there's no question of doubling it: "Sing", "word", "correct", "polymath" etc would never become "singging", "wordded" and so on. So, of course, for words that end in vowels, even silent ones: "Fête" would never become "fêtted".
"Begin" has a short 'i' and a single 'n', and that syllable gets the emphasis, so "beginning" has a doubled 'n'. Likewise "tapped", "referred", "ridden", "putter" (as in golf) and "potter", "brevetted" and more. It SHOULD go for "busses" and "gasses", too, but for some reason it doesn't.
"Retain" is emphasized on its last syllable, but it has a long vowel so it's "retained" not "retainned". Likewise "miked" (the root verb is "mic"), "mooned" and "polluted".
"Travel" ends in a short vowel and single consonant, but the emphasis is on the first syllable so it's "traveled"; likewise "chartered", "canceled", "showered", "ruined", "battered", "filtered" and others. BUT you'll notice that many people never learned this rule well, and "travelled" and "cancelled" are usually found in descriptive dictionaries, on the grounds not that it's actually correct but that people do in fact keep spelling it that way.
Some words fail to stick to the rule. "Driven" should be "drivven" (as with "ridden" and "written"), but we never spell it that way. A book you use to prime one's learning is spelled "primer" but pronounced "primmer"; the only word we spell "primmer" means "more prim". "Chagrined" should be spelled "chagrinned". "Gasses" and "busses" I mentioned before; apparently the only way they're ever spelled is "gases" and "buses". ("Busses" means more than one buss, ie kiss.)
Ok, obviously I got off the topic, but the point is that without being actually wrong you can write "travelled" or "traveled", "cancelled" or "canceled" and a few others. I'm not sure those really count as the same as your examples, though.
Here's another weird one. The optical component called a "lens" can also be spelled "lense" (even though spell-check flags the latter). But both acceptable spellings are "verbified" the same way … "lensed" (which spell-check also flags).
It didn't much care for "verbified" either.
The plurals of either spelling are also the same (lenses).
Interestingly, the two differ in both singular and plural possessive forms. Following the usual rules for possessives gives different results, depending which spelling you start with.
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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