Homonyms and Spelling Test Buddy

(Re-)Learn what they are and how you can work with them in Spelling Test Buddy

Jason @SpellingTestBuddy
February 23, 2025

A new feature to support homographs is now available in Spelling Test Buddy. If you want to see it, jump to the end of this article.

Let’s first learn/re-learn what they are and see some examples.

Homonyms

Homonyms are words that share the same spelling or pronunciation but have different meanings. They can be divided into two categories:

Homophones: Words that sound the same but have different meanings and spellings (e.g., “bare” and “bear”).
Homographs: Words that are spelled the same but have different meanings and sometimes different pronunciations (e.g., “lead” as in a metal vs. “lead” as in to guide).

Homophones

Homophones are words that have the same pronunciation but different meanings and spellings. Understanding homophones helps students avoid common spelling mistakes in writing.

Homographs

Homographs are words that have the same spelling but different meanings. Some homographs are pronounced the same (e.g., “bank” – a financial institution vs. the side of a river), while others have different pronunciations (e.g., “read” – present vs. past tense).

Examples of Homonyms, Homophones, and Homographs

Type	Word 1	Meaning	Word 2	Meaning
Homophones	bare	uncovered	bear	large animal or to carry
flour	baking ingredient	flower	blooming plant
hear	to perceive sound	here	in this location
write	to compose text	right	correct; direction
Homographs	lead	heavy metal	lead	to guide
bass	type of fish	bass	low musical tone
bow	to bend forward	bow	part of a ship
wind	movement of air	wind	to twist or turn
Homonyms (spelled or pronounced the same)	bank	financial institution	bank	side of a river
bat	flying mammal	bat	sports equipment
light	opposite of heavy	light	illumination
fair	just, reasonable	fair	public event

Customizing the word’s sentence in Spelling Test Buddy

Now lets see how you can work with homonyms in Spelling Test Buddy.

Sometimes the word you enter isn’t the right homonym that you meant. With Spelling Test Buddy, you can now easily change the sentence.

First, find the word you want to change:

Here, I entered wind. But is it the feeling in there, or the way vines crawl up a tree?

Tap on the pencil icon next to a word to expand the editor:

From here I can edit the word or the sentence, or play them back

Change the sentence to be what you want.

This is the “wind” that I really want here

Tap on “Save” to save the changes, and the audio will update to the new sentence.

This is available for all users (teachers, parents, and students) of Spelling Test Buddy!

Do you want to learn more about the science behind homonyms?

How do learning homonyms improve our cognitive development? At what ages do we begin to grasp them? You can learn more, and see additional video resources, in this blog post.