Society for Pure English.

by Robert Bridges.

ENGLISH h.o.m.oPHONES

[Sidenote: Definition of h.o.m.ophone.]

When two or more words different in origin and signification are p.r.o.nounced alike, whether they are alike or not in their spelling, they are said to be h.o.m.ophonous, or h.o.m.ophones of each other. Such words if spoken without context are of ambiguous signification.

h.o.m.ophone is strictly a relative term, but it is convenient to use it absolutely, and to call any word of this kind a h.o.m.ophone.[1]

[Footnote 1: h.o.m.ophone is a Greek word meaning 'same-sounding', and before using the relative word in this double way I have preferred to make what may seem a needless explanation. It is convenient, for instance, to say that _son_ and _heir_ are both h.o.m.ophones, meaning that each belongs to that particular cla.s.s of words which without context are of ambiguous signification: and it is convenient also to say that _son_ and _sun_ and _heir_ and _air_ are h.o.m.ophones without explaining that it is meant that they are mutually h.o.m.ophonous, which is evident. A physician congratulating a friend on the birth of his first-born might say, 'Now that you have a son and heir, see that he gets enough sun and air'.]

h.o.m.ophony is between words as _significant_ sounds, but it is needful to state that h.o.m.ophonous words must be _different_ words, else we should include a whole cla.s.s of words which are not true h.o.m.ophones.

Such words as _draft_, _train_, _board_, have each of them separate meanings as various and distinct as some true h.o.m.ophones; for instance, a draught of air, the miraculous draught of fishes, the draught of a ship, the draft of a picture, or a draught of medicine, or the present draft of this essay, though it may ultimately appear medicinal, are, some of them, quite as distinct objects or notions as, for instance, _vane_ and _vein_ are: but the ambiguity of _draft_, however spelt, is due to its being the name of anything that is _drawn_; and since there are many ways of drawing things, and different things are drawn in different ways, the _same word_ has come to carry very discrepant significations.

Though such words as these[2] are often inconveniently and even distressingly ambiguous, they are not h.o.m.ophones, and are therefore excluded from my list: they exhibit different meanings of one word, not the same sound of different words: they are of necessity present, I suppose, in all languages, and corresponding words in independent languages will often develop exactly corresponding varieties of meaning. But since the ultimate origin and derivation of a word is sometimes uncertain, the scientific distinction cannot be strictly enforced.

[Footnote 2: Such words have no technical cla.s.s-name; they are merely extreme examples of the ambiguity common to most words, which grows up naturally from divergence of meaning. True h.o.m.ophones are separate words which have, or have acquired, an illogical fortuitous ident.i.ty.]

[Sidenote: False h.o.m.ophones.]

Now, wherever the same derivation of any two same-sounding words is at all doubtful, such words are practically h.o.m.ophones:--and again in cases where the derivation is certainly the same, yet, if the ultimate meanings have so diverged that we cannot easily resolve them into one idea, as we always can _draft_, these also may be practically reckoned as h.o.m.ophones.

_Continent_, adjective and substantive, is an example of absolute divergence of meaning, inherited from the Latin; but as they are different parts of speech, I allow their plea of identical derivation and exclude them from my list. On the other hand, the substantive _beam_ is an example of such a false h.o.m.ophone as I include. _Beam_ may signify a balk of timber, or a ray of light. Milton's address to light begins

O first created beam

and Chaucer has

As thikke as motes in the sonne-beam,

and this is the commonest use of the word in poetry, and probably in literature: Sh.e.l.ley has

Then the bright child the plumed seraph came And fixed its blue and beaming eyes on mine.

But in Tyndal's gospel we read

Why seest thou a mote in thy brother's eye and perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

The word beam is especially awkward here,[3] because the beam that is proper to the eye is not the kind of beam which is intended.

The absurdity is not excused by our familiarity, which Shakespeare submitted to, though he omits the incriminating eye:

You found his mote; the king your mote did see, But I a beam do find in each of three.

[Footnote 3: It is probable that in Tyndal's time the awkwardness was not so glaring: for 'beam' as a ray of light seems to have developed its connexion with the eye since his date, in spite of his proverbial use of it in the other sense.]

And yet just before he had written

So sweet a kiss the golden sun gives not To those fresh morning drops upon the rose, As thy eye-beams when their fresh rays have smote The night of dew that on my cheeks down flows.

Let alone the complication that _mote_ is also a h.o.m.ophone, and that outside Gulliver's travels one might as little expect to find a house-beam as a castle-moat in a man's eye, the confusion of _beam_ is indefensible, and the example will serve three purposes: first to show how different significations of the same word may make practical h.o.m.ophones, secondly the radical mischief of all h.o.m.ophones, and thirdly our insensibility towards an absurdity which is familiar: but the absurdity is no less where we are accustomed to it than where it is unfamiliar and shocks us.

[Sidenote: Tolerance due to habit.]

And we are so accustomed to h.o.m.ophones in English that they do not much offend us; we do not imagine their non-existence, and most people are probably unaware of their inconvenience. It might seem that to be perpetually burdened by an inconvenience must be the surest way of realizing it, but through habituation our practice is no doubt full of unconscious devices for avoiding these ambiguities: moreover, inconveniences to which we are born are very lightly taken: many persons have grown up to manhood blind of one eye without being aware of their disability; and others who have no sense of smell or who cannot hear high sounds do not miss the sense that they lack; and so I think it may be with us and our h.o.m.ophones.

But since if all words were alike in sound there would be no spoken language, the differentiation of the sound of words is of the essence of speech, and it follows that the more h.o.m.ophones there are in any language, the more faulty is that language as a scientific and convenient vehicle of speech. This will be ill.u.s.trated in due course: the actual condition of English with respect to h.o.m.ophones must be understood and appreciated before the nature of their growth and the possible means of their mitigation will seem practical questions.

[Sidenote: Great number.]

The first essential, then, is to know the extent and nature of the mischief; and this can only be accomplished by setting out the h.o.m.ophones in a table before the eye. The list below is taken from a 'p.r.o.nouncing dictionary' which professes not to deal with obsolete words, and it gives over 800 ambiguous sounds; so that, since these must be at least doublets, and many of them are triplets or quadruplets, we must have something between 1,600 and 2,000 words of ambiguous meaning in our ordinary vocabulary.[4]

[Footnote 4: In Skeat's _Etymological Dictionary_ there is a list of _h.o.m.onyms_, that is words which are ambiguous to the eye by similar spellings, as h.o.m.ophones are to the ear by similar sounds: and that list, which includes obsolete words, has 1,600 items. 1,600 is the number of h.o.m.ophones which our list would show if they were all only doublets.]

Now it is variously estimated that 3,000 to 5,000 words is about the limit of an average educated man's talking vocabulary, and since the 1,600 are, the most of them, words which such a speaker will use (the reader can judge for himself) it follows that he has a foolishly imperfect and clumsy instrument.

As to what proportion 1,700 (say) may be to the full vocabulary of the language--it is difficult to estimate this because the dictionaries vary so much. The word _h.o.m.ophone_ is not recognized by Johnson or by Richardson: Johnson under _h.o.m.o-_ has six derivatives of Herbert Spencer's favourite word _h.o.m.ogeneous_, but beside these only four other words with this Greek affix. Richardson's dictionary has an even smaller number of such entries. Jones has 11 entries of _h.o.m.o-_, and these of only five words, but the Oxford dictionary, besides 50 words noted and quoted beginning with _h.o.m.o-_, has 64 others with special articles.

Dr. Richard Morris estimated the number of words in an English dictionary as 100,000: Jones has 38,000 words, exclusive of proper names, and I am told that the Oxford dictionary will have over 300,000. Its 114 _h.o.m.o-_ words will show how this huge number is partly supplied.

Before the reader plunges into the list, I should wish to fortify his spirit against premature despair by telling him that in my tedious searching of the dictionary for these words I was myself cheered to find how many words there were which are _not_ h.o.m.ophones.

LIST OF h.o.m.oPHONES

This list, the object of which is to make the reader easily acquainted with the actual defect of the language in this particular, does not pretend to be complete or scientific; and in the identification of doubtful words the clue was dictated by brevity. _s._, _v._, and _adj._ mean _substantive_, _verb_, and _adjective_. The sections were made to aid the conspectus.

The main indictment is contained in sections i, ii, and iii. These three sections contain 505 entries, involving some 1,075 words.

The h.o.m.ophones in the other sections, iv, v, vi, vii, viii and ix, are _generally_ of such a kind that they would not of themselves const.i.tute a very peculiar case against the English language; but their addition to the main list does very much strengthen the case.

One intention in isolating them from the main list was to prevent their contaminating it with their weaker quality; but their separate cla.s.sification crosses and sometimes overrides that more general distinction. Section iv has some literary interest; vi is inconsistent; the other sections are more or less scientific. These six sections contain some 330 entries involving about 700 words, so that the total of words involved is about 1,775.

The order in this section is that of the phonetic alphabet.

I. THE MAIN LIST OF h.o.m.oPHONES.

arc, ark.

arm (_limb_), arm (_weapon_).

alms, arms.

aunt, ant, arn't.

arch (_s._), arch (_adj._).

eye, ay, I.

idol, idle, idyll.

aisle, isle, I'll.

eyelet, islet.