THE CHALLENGE

Think you’re a word whiz? Take the newly invented quiz for word nerds, by yours truly. But first, let me set the scene.

 

THE SCENE

You’re at work. You’re writing. Pounding away on your keyboard. Things are moving and you’re feeling good. Suddenly, you come across one of those words that sneers at you after you type it. You pause. Crap. It’s one of those. Those ones that you always second guess and often mess up. Why? Because you have choices in spelling and meaning and you have to pick the right one. Luckily, spell check often helps us out, but, it’s not always that simple.

 

These words are not your friends. In fact, they don’t even really like each other—they’re frenemies. These words are homo (same) phones (sound). Think of them as slightly evil fraternal twins or triplets whose aim in life is to get you to confuse them, even though they’re not technically identical twins. Think of the movie Parent Trap. It stars Hayley Mills (or Lindsay Lohan, depending on your generation) as Hallie and Annie, identical twins separated at birth. The chaos ensues as they return home from summer camp to each other’s lives and confuse the crap out of their separated parents. The analogy isn’t perfect, but you get the point.

 

Let’s talk turkey. The most common homophone we regularly encounter is probably “effect” and “affect.”

• Effect is the noun. “I suffer the negative effects of homophones when I write.”

• Affect is the verb. “I am negatively affected by homophones.” Or, “homophones negatively affect me.”

• If we want to get crazy, we could also throw in Affect with the emphasis on the “a.” It’s still a verb, but now we’ve got ourselves an almost entirely different meaning. “The writer affected a nonchalance about the effects of homophones.” Meaning? He acted like he wasn’t bothered by them, even though he was.

 

What negative effects do you experience from homophones? Perhaps an eye twitch? A sudden onset of Tourettes as you curse yourself for not remembering which, witch is wich? A tinge of panic? Let’s call this homophonobia—and please note the “n” mid-word so that we don’t get confused with another term. I just invented this word, but I think it describes a pretty normal human experience. And it goes far beyond the typical word traps: then vs. than, who’s vs. whose, to vs. too, here vs. hear, there vs. their.

 

So, why don’t we face our fears this Friday and take a pop quiz? Is there a word for the fear of pop quizzes? Because there should be. There’s a phobia for everything else. But don’t worry. This one is not graded and no one is looking but you. Strut your stuff.

 

Are you ready?

QUIZ STARTS HERE

The same sounding word completes the sentences grouped below, but the spelling and meaning are different. (I wish I could make this interactive because it’d be loads easier to play, but alas, a programmer I am not.) Pull out your number two pencils from your pocket protectors—we’re going manual. Your job is to:

1. Read each sentence group.

2. Guess the homophone (based on the contexts provided in each sentence group) that would fill in the blanks.

3. Insert the correct version of each homophone into each sentence.

4. Keep score if you’re a raging perfectionist. Otherwise, don’t bother.

The answers are immediately below each group of sentences, so scroll carefully computer wizards, lest you ruin your own fun!

 

• Aunt Sally collects anything and everything from garage sales, estate sales and deceased relatives. I think she has a problem because she can’t see to clean out. I pray that I never ____ the way she does.

• Aunt Sally was just one of the ____ of relatives tormenting me about not having a baby even though I’ve been married for 7 years.

[hoard, horde]

 

• When you eat a pizza that’s too hot, you can burn your ____, and the soft tissue on the roof of your mouth bubbles and peels. Gross.

• I ordered twenty 10-lb. bags of river pebbles to landscape my front yard. They were delivered this afternoon on a big ____. I’ve got a lot of work to do now.

• Jeanine, the classmate in art school with whom I shared studio time each week, never cleaned her ____ when she was done. The stuff was just caked on.

[palate, pallet, palette]

 

• In the book I’m reading, the detective is in a small town in Wales trying to figure out the perpetrator of a series of ____ crimes.

• One woman caught a glimpse of the criminal when he got sloppy, but all she could recall was that he was older with a ____ beard.

[grisly, grizzly]

 

• This wine is delicious; it would really ____ the filet mignon the chef wants to serve.

• If this filet mignon could drink, taste, and talk, it would definitely ____ the wine. It’s simply delightful.

[complement, compliment]

  

• If you believe God created the universe, then you most likely believe that he is ____ in his creation.

• The ____ Proust scholar in the movie Little Miss Sunshine is played by Steve Carrell.

• You know it’s time to childproof the house when crawling and walking are ____ in your child’s development.

[immanent, eminent, imminent]

  

• Jaguars are ____ animals native to South America. I don’t envy the photographer tasked with that shoot; they’ll likely have to wait forever.

• Jim is a very straight-forward guy. He prefers precise answers to math problems over ____ poetry interpretations.

• It’s not surprising that little Jane never found the ____ tooth fairy. Now we’ll have to figure out how to break the news to her that it never existed in the first place.

[elusive, allusive, illusive]

• The ____ on my work badge must have gotten wonky because it only randomly lets me in. Every morning is a crap shoot when I walk up to the door. I guess I need to get a new one from Security.

• I fear that if we ____ her too roughly for her recent absences, that we’ll drive her away from school altogether. She’s a smart girl. We need to find a way to get through to her.

• The government officials ____ all press in Venezuela. You can’t get real news on broadcast television or newspapers. We’ve resorted to using various back channels online to figure out what’s really going on.

[sensor, censure, censor]

 

BONUS ROUND STARTS HERE

OK, are you ready for the bonus round? Soon you’ll receive your word nerd crown. Now we’re narrowing down to a single sentence. Like before, your job is to guess and place the homophone correctly in each blank of a sentence. May the odds be ever in your favor.

 

• ____ that you ____ the car. We simply don’t have the money to deal with another unforeseen event.

[ensure, insure]

• In the highland forests of Uganda, the rebels practice ____ warfare while the ____ scavenge for food and live peaceably but for poachers.

[guerillas, gorillas]

• The young boy watched with ____ breath as his father ____ the hook. The boy’s teenage brother, sulking on the dock, ceaselessly ___ him about his love of fishing.

[bated, baited, baited]

 

• My leg feels good. I ____ to completing the _____. After I broke my ankle I never thought I’d get the chance to climb again.

[assent, ascent]

 

• After she discovered she was allergic to bees, she became quite ____ to ____ reactions as you can imagine.

[averse, adverse]

 

• How does she afford so many ____? Well, she ____ the classrooms for any discarded ones. Did you know that if you just paint over them, you can reuse them and save a ton of money at the art supply store?

[canvases, canvasses]

 

• I’m going to suffer ____ criticism because I simply can’t ____ what happened even though it wasn’t my fault. I wish it were as easy as Ctrl + Z on my computer.

[undue, undo]

 

• I am ___ with guilt over the fact that I ____ up so many wins against my grandson in Go Fish. Am I crushing his spirit? Should I let him win?

[wracked, racked]

• The ____ of disease in this community goes far beyond the number of ____ reported by the Ministry of Health. Moreover, the media vastly understated the severity of the epidemic by reporting it as a couple of isolated ____.

[incidence, incidents, incidents]

YOUR WORD WHIZ NERD CROWN << 👑>>

If you made it this far, regardless of your score, you are a word nerd. I pass the proverbial mantle (or is it mantel?) on to you. Congratulations! Bonus points if you find anything I screwed up. I’m so homophoned out right about now! Happy almost weekend, word nerds, and thanks for reading.

P.S. Main blog image from the Pioneer Woman here.