Homonyms and Their Grammatical Heirs

[Turtle]

gait

gate

[freeztar]

knot
naught
nought
not

[Doctordick]

Hi Turtle, I haven't read all of the entries here but I bet I have one that I bet no one has noticed. In fact, the possibility of confusion never even dawned on me until my wife pointed out what she thought I had said.

My wife is quite a quilter. She started quilting three years ago when she retired and has created some 70 quilts already (I often point out that she's turning them out at about one every two week). And these are blue ribbon quilts for the most part. She just got asked to give some courses on “paper piecing” by two different quilting guilds so she's good. By the way she was a math major in college so she knows how figure out the best way to lay these things out.

So, this morning she wanted me to draw a particular figure out which was too large for her drawing implements. I have quite a nice drawing set up for making blue prints which I have had for some thirty years so she wanted me to make this complex “paper piecing” template with some old unused blue print paper I had. So we were setting up my compass to draw some circles which had to be fairly accurate sewing wise anyway. At any rate, she was holding the ruler while I set my bar compass to the radius, holding the point on the zero. Now my eyesight's not so great anymore and, since the ruler happened to be in tenths of an inch, I was trying to estimate the middle between two marks. She kept saying, “you're off the mark” and I kept saying “it's in tenths” while I concentrated on centering the thing. It was quite clear that she thought the ruler was in sixteenths and I couldn't understand why she wasn't listening to me. Because of her interruptions I finally stopped and said, “the ruler is in tenths of an inch and I am trying to estimate the middle”.

Then she told me she thought I was saying, “it's intense”. So we both had a laugh and went back to work.

Have fun -- Dick

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by Doctordick

Hi Turtle, I haven't read all of the entries here but I bet I have one that I bet no one has noticed. In fact, the possibility of confusion never even dawned on me until my wife pointed out what she thought I had said. ... Because of her interruptions I finally stopped and said, “the ruler is in tenths of an inch and I am trying to estimate the middle”.

Then she told me she thought I was saying, “it's intense”. So we both had a laugh and went back to work.

Have fun -- Dick

That's a great one; thanks for contributing Dick. The same might be said of the circus, that is, 'it's in tents'.

Here's a three-fer:

cent
sent
scent

[Turtle]

maise

maze

[Turtle]

dew

do

doo

due

[Turtle]

beer

bier

[Turtle]

cellar

seller

[freeztar]

Originally Posted by Turtle

cellar

seller

Sell 'er (distinguished from 'seller' by being a two-part command consisting of a transitive verb and a direct object)
Sailor (perhaps a stretch, but I'm guessing it works in Australya)

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by Freezeheimer

Sell 'er (distinguished from 'seller' by being a two-part command consisting of a transitive verb and a direct object)
Sailor (perhaps a stretch, but I'm guessing it works in Australya)

I don't know about Oz, but I'll allow "sell 'er" is in the spirit of sound-alikes making for errors. I tried hard to justify adding 'celler', as in one who makes or uses cells, but found only at best 'celled' and so left it off.

Who could have guessed that a guest could sell 'er?