{"id":16533,"date":"2011-10-28T03:39:28","date_gmt":"2011-10-28T03:39:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newspaper.ctsi-logistics.com\/?p=16533"},"modified":"2011-10-28T03:39:28","modified_gmt":"2011-10-28T03:39:28","slug":"the-brain-spider","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/the-brain-spider\/","title":{"rendered":"The brain spider"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ed<\/p>\n

\u00a0By Ed Stephens Jr.
\nSpecial to the Saipan Tribune<\/div>\n

Saipan is a linguistic crossroads, and a student of English asked me to list some words that sound the same but which have different spellings and meanings. That’s a big deal, given that most of us probably write from phonetic memory. This steers us into the maw of computerized word-checking where we get green flags for the wrong word. Yes indeed, \u201cSpell Czech is grate!”<\/p>\n

English is full of these sneaky words. In fact, as I just discovered, it’s so full of these words that there’s not enough space in this column to list them. Yikes!<\/p>\n

Indeed, once I unleashed the language spider on a random crawl through my brain, the sneaky words just kept on popping up. The project hijacked my entire day. So I beamed the brain spider into my editor’s brain, too; it’s my way of sticking it to the Man.<\/p>\n

The list, as it stands now, is 131 words. It will surely creep up over the next few days as the brain spiders keep crawling, and they’ll do that, whether we want them to or not.<\/p>\n

I’ll print the first part of the list today. Then I’ll either publish the second half in this space next week or maybe I’ll just put it on my website. I haven’t decided yet.<\/p>\n

Incidentally, I’m excluding proper nouns (e.g. Maine, Gayle, etc.). And this is just a mental exercise; recourse to a dictionary or reference would probably uncover thousands of these sneaky words, but that would take the fun out of it. This is brain-spider turf, not an exhaustive list.<\/p>\n

So here we go:
\n1).Here, hear
\n2).Their, there
\n3). Plane, plain; I’ve flown some plain planes.
\n4). Two, too, to; the infamous sneaky triple
\n5). Hare, hair; \u201charebrained\u201d
\n6). Great, grate
\n7). Do, dew, due
\n8). Write, right, rite; \u201crite of passage\u201d
\n9). Role, roll
\n10). Male, mail
\n11). Mall, maul
\n12). Your, you’re; simple but often messed up
\n13). Bore, boar. Also: bored, board.
\n14). Hi, high
\n15). Piece, peace
\n16). Tail, tale
\n17). Aye, I, eye
\n18). Son, sun
\n19). Pee, pea; a distinction that fueled many a joke in second grade.
\n20). So, sew
\n21). Bare, bear; third grade for these jokes.
\n22). Night, knight
\n23). In, inn
\n24). Wood, would
\n25). Hey, hay; \u201chey\u201d isn’t much of a word so maybe this shouldn’t count.
\n26). Where, ware, wear; \u201cwarehouse\u201d
\n27). Pare, pair, pear
\n28). See, sea
\n29). Nose, knows
\n30). Pail, pale
\n31). Blue, blew
\n32). Dear, deer
\n33). Fourth, forth; these two are easy to mix up.
\n34). Main, mane
\n35). Rode, road; these seem to go together nicely.
\n36). Lode, load; the \u201cMother Lode\u201d started the gold rush.
\n37). Wry, rye
\n38). Vise, vice
\n39). Know, no
\n40). Pain, pane
\n41). Whole, hole
\n42). Moat, mote
\n43). Might, mite
\n44). Four, fore, for
\n45). Sine, sign; can you \u201ccosine\u201d for a loan?
\n46). Wine, whine
\n47). Bee, be
\n48). Lead, led
\n49). Red, read
\n50). Wet, whet; \u201cwhet the appetite\u201d
\n51). Toe, tow; \u201ctoe the line\u201d
\n52). Not, knot
\n53). Need, knead, kneed
\n54). Doe, dough
\n55). Days, daze
\n56). Die, dye
\n57). Witch, which
\n58). Principal, principle; this one is tricky.
\n59). Capitol, capital; one squanders the other!
\n60). Damn, dam
\n61). Flea, flee
\n62). Gait, gate
\n63). Tare, tear
\n64). Wait, weight
\n65). Site, sight, cite; a very insidious triple-sneak.
\nThat will do it for today. By now the spider has been implanted in your brain, too; it’s my way of sticking it to the Reader.<\/p>\n

Visit Ed Stephens Jr. at\u00a0TropicalEd.com. Ed is a pilot, economist, and writer. He holds a degree in economics from UCLA and is a former U.S. naval officer. His column runs every Friday.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0By Ed Stephens Jr. Special to the Saipan Tribune Saipan is a linguistic crossroads, and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16533\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}