homophones

1. Two words that sound alike. This category includes words that are spelled the same, such as trunk (of an elephant) and trunk (a storage chest), as well as words spelled differently, such as deer and dear.

Example Sentences

Students in the small, remote community of Estancia, N.M., were enthusiastically engaged in a vocabulary lesson, enunciating words with a “bossy r,” as well as homophones and homonyms, and spelling them on white boards.

From New York Times

When the principal calls her Melanie, Wang’s heroine adopts three of her Mandarin name’s homophones: Mist, who can be invisible; Basket, carrier of her parents’ dreams; and Blue, her truest self.

From New York Times

It’s also not especially theatrical, as there are no characters or story beyond what’s necessary to set up the seven games viewers are asked to play, involving Spoonerisms, homophones, anagrams and the like.

From New York Times

And I argue that even though he’s world-famous and globally acclaimed, he’s really underrated for the kind of sophisticated nuanced deployment of homophones, metonymy, simile, metaphor, braggadocio, allusion.

From Washington Post

Around its immaculately detailed, exuberantly bulbous surface swim a whitefish, a mackerel, a freshwater perch and a carp — four fish whose Chinese names are homophones for a phrase meaning “honest and incorruptible.”

From New York Times