The Oxford Word Challenge

Easy Word Game Homophones

An old joke tells of someone asking the assistant at a paper shop: 'Do you keep stationery?' and she replies: 'No, I wriggle about a bit.' She clearly thought he meant the word that is spelt 'stationary'. There are many pairs of words like this, which sound the same but are spelt differently. They are called homophones or sometimes homonyms.

Identify the pairs of homophones from the following clues.

Example: One word means a place for keeping aircraft; the other word means a shaped piece of wood, metal, etc. on which you can hang clothes.
Answer: Hangar/hanger.

1. One word means simple; the other means an aircraft.

2. One word means expected; the other word means condensed vapour.

3. One word is nautical; the other is central to the body.

4. One word means connections; the other is an animal.

5. One word means an occasion; the other is a herb.

6. One word means to hit; the other is a vegetable.

7. One word means permitted; the other means audible.

8. One word is a singer; the other is a sum of money.

9. One word is an animal; the other is an undercover fighter.

10. One word means kind; the other means searched for.

11. One means excluded; the other is a poet.

12. One word is a day; the other is a sweet.

13. One word means pursued; the other means pure.

14. One word means a woolly South American animal; the other means a Buddhist monk in Tibet or Mongolia.

15. These are the names of two particular people; one is a macho man; the other is a poet.

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