I love words that sound the same, but are spelled differently, e.g. – your, yore, you’re; and those that are spelled the same, but have alternative pronunciations or meanings, e.g. – lead the metal, and lead the verb…

Those of you who know me know that I have a love of and perhaps a skill with originating Dad Jokes. Ok, well, maybe that’s a stretch, and it’s not so much a skill as s curse. Whatever, it is a rare day that my bent mind doesn’t toy with mangling the English language just for pun and prophet. The Gospel of, so to speak.

In my expansive spare time, actually even before the coronavirus pandemic laid waste to the land and forced compassionate persons into isolated islands, I began pulling together a draft of a Grammar Police Dictionary to be used as a resource by anyone who is into Dad Jokes, and has a deep and abiding love of the English language for its powers of suasion, color and shade, and pliability in maiming the spoken word. I present here a selection taken from letter “B” of the draft – Most examples throughout the dictionary are a set of homonyms, others aligned in threes, and where the language has spawned generously, in groups of four, the latter, a rarity, but still there.

Note from your ear’s experiences with Dad Jokes that the magic lies in either words sounding the same though spelled differently, or being spelled the same but having different sounds and meanings.

berry/bury
bight/bite/byte
birth/berth
bison/bye son
bite/byte
blest/blessed
blew/blue
blow/blow/below
board/bored
bolt/bolt
bond/bond
bore/boar/boor
born/borne
bough/bow
bought/bot
bow/bow/bough/beau
bowl/bole
brand/brand
breach/breech
bread/bred
break/brake

I don’t know whether such a tome would have any kind of market and interest, and maybe it’s just a massive play on words for me, in which case I’ll just continue to have grate fun with it…