Not that there's Anything Wrong with It!

I like homographs. You know I’m a liberal sort of guy, but this has nothing to do with sexual orientation. It’s NOT gay writing!

A homograph is a pair of words with the same spelling, different pronunciation, and different roots. Different roots is the key. Words that are pronounced differently regionally or some such, like root or roof, are not, as we say in English-major jargon, homo’s.

Here’s a good example (and one of my faves):

entrance (way in), and entrance (to fascinate).

See if you can come up with any!

Here’s a partial list of ones I can think of off-hand.

entrance

moped (sulked) (motorized bike)

minute (time) (tiny)

bow (knot) (front of a ship)

sow (planting) (pig)

pussy (full of pus) (you know!)

wind (preload) (air movement)

windy (twisty) (lots of wind)

produce (vegetables) (to make)

I got lots more, I'm just too lazy to type them. If I didn't have to 'splain 'em.....

Fun, huh?

I thought I’d like eponyms when I heard about them, but there’s only a couple cool ones that I’ve heard so far. These are people’s names that have become words in common usage.

Here’s my faves:

sandwich (food named for the 4th Earl of Sandwich)

crap, crapper (Thomas Crapper, supposed inventor of the water closet)

Malapropism ( the Shakespearean character Mrs. Malaprop)

Some others are not so cool, like fahrenheit, curie, and pasteurize. Maybe my vast readership could come up with some good ones. Post ‘em in the comments!

I’d like to propose a few eponyms:

bush (ignoramus) Ex: “Jeez! What a bush!”

clinton (type of non-sexual oral gratification) Ex: “Oooh, ooh, you give fine clinton, baby.”

reagan (sleeping through important events) Ex. “Shoot! Did I reagan during sex again, honey?”

bush* (barfing on people) Ex: “Dang!! I just bushed on the chef at Beni-Hana!”

vance (first rate word-smithing) Ex: "You really vanced that post, dude!”

p’niss** (an habitual blog commenter) Ex: “That P’niss sure is a p’niss!”


*Context will keep these two from being confusing.

**Could be potentially confused with a similar sounding word. However, p’nisses are not often pianists.

Maybe we'll have fun with palindromes, sometime!