Homophones and Homographs: An American Dictionary 3rd edition

First published in 1986, with a second, enlarged edition in 1993, this intriguing work stems from “an obsession to locate and organise all homophones in our language”. Hobbs’s interest in homophones (words that sound the same but differ in spelling and meaning, like rain, reign, rein) extends also to homographs (words that are spelled the same but differ in sound and meaning, like Polish and polish). Several million entries in standard American dictionaries and reference works were reviewed to glean this third edition’s 7,786 homophones and near‐homophones (such as turban and turbine), and its 1,552 homographs. The ratio of homophones...