My Aunt Loe (pronounced low-ee, not like Moe) sent this email and I wanted to share it because I love play on words. Gee, I wonder why?

Homographs are words of like spelling but with more than one meaning. A homograph that is also pronounced differently is a heteronym.

You think English is easy??I think a retired English teacher was bored...however, THIS IS GREAT! 

Read all the way to the end. This took a lot of work to put together! 

 

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.

2) The farm was used to produce

produce.

3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse 
more refuse.

4) We must polish the Polish furniture.

 

5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.

 

6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the 
desert.

7) Since there is no time like the present, he 
thought it was time to present the present.

8) A bass was painted on the 
head of the bass drum.

 

9) When shot at, the dove dove 
into the bushes.

 

10) I did not object to the 
object.

11) The insurance was invalid 
for the invalid.

12) There was a row among the 
oarsmen about how to row.

 

13) They were too close to 
the door to close it.

 

14) The buck does funny things 
when the does are present.

15) A seamstress and a sewer 
fell down into a sewer line.

 

16) To help with planting, 
the farmer taught his sow to sow.

17) The wind 
was too strong to wind the sail.

 

18) Upon seeing the 
tear in the painting I shed a tear.

19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

 

20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Let's face it - English is a crazy language. 

There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are animal organs. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

 

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is 
teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get 
rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

 

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be 
committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell? How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out, and in which an alarm goes off by going on.

 

English was invented by people, not computers, and it 
reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.

 

PS. - Why doesn't 'Buick' rhyme with 'quick'?