Words that sound the same

but are spelled differently. You all know the classic “to”, “too” and “two”. And possibly the most common and annoying one – “your” and “you’re”, we see this all over the place, especially in social media posts. By the way, don’t make the mistake of politely pointing out this error to anyone lest you become the “grammer (sic) Nazi”. But I digress…

A simple search using your favourite search engine will reveal that there are endless lists of these words available to play with.

So, can we have some fun with these? How about trying to use all of a homophone group in a single phrase..

The key to the Quay

or

Not at night, Sir Knight

or

I won one

or even

In the Inn

So, that was pretty trivial (much like this whole post really) using only two words. What about groups of three? I can think of a couple

They’re on their way there

or

Two days too soon to celebrate

or 

On his way to weigh the whey

The most concise example of a sentence containing three word homophones I have found (in numerous places) is 

There, they’re theirs

That is homophone gold, in my book.

Trawling the Internet, I have only located three legitimate examples of four word homophones. 

• Paws, pause, pours, pores.
• Write, rite, right, wright.
• Yaw, yore, your, you’re.

There many more quoted examples out there but they rely on the use of Proper nouns or regional variations in spelling between say American and British English. Technically, the latter items fit the criteria for Homophones but realistically you’re not very likely to see both variants in the same sentence. For this I have rejected them. I’m the Grammer Nazi, remember?

Whilst clearly not impossible, it is certainly a challenge to construct a valid sentence with any of these four word groups. These are my least clunky attempts (really!):

Outside it pours, there is a slight pause in cleaning whilst the cat pores over its grubby paws.

or

The ship wright will write his last rite, right?

or

In days of yore, yaw meant you’re wandering of your course.

I’m sure there’s better out there so hunt around or better still, have a go yourself.