SUS-pect and sus-PECT. IN-valid and in-VALID. English is filled with words that are spelled the same but sound different. We dug in and found a few interesting reasons. LINKS AND SPONSORS | Magoosh: http://magoosh.com code: GRAMMAR | Bank of America.: http://careers.bankofamerica.com | Babbel: http://babbel.com | Grammar Girl Email Newsletter | https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/newsletters | GRAMMAR POP iOS GAME | Optimized for iPad: http://bit.ly/iPadGrammarPop | For iPad and iPhone: http://bit.ly/GrammarPopMobile | PEEVE WARS CARD GAME | https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/grammar-girl-s-peeve-wars | GRAMMAR GIRL BOOKS | http://bit.ly/GrammarPopBooks | GRAMMAR GIRL IS PART OF THE QUICK AND DIRTY TIPS PODCAST NETWORK | VOICEMAIL: 833-214-GIRL (833-214-4475)
SUS-pect and sus-PECT. IN-valid and in-VALID. English is filled with words that are spelled the same but sound different. We dug in and found a few interesting reasons.
LINKS AND SPONSORS |
Magoosh: http://magoosh.com code: GRAMMAR |
Bank of America.: http://careers.bankofamerica.com |
Babbel: http://babbel.com |
Grammar Girl Email Newsletter |
https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/newsletters |
GRAMMAR POP iOS GAME |
Optimized for iPad: http://bit.ly/iPadGrammarPop |
For iPad and iPhone: http://bit.ly/GrammarPopMobile |
PEEVE WARS CARD GAME |
https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/grammar-girl-s-peeve-wars |
GRAMMAR GIRL BOOKS |
http://bit.ly/GrammarPopBooks |
GRAMMAR GIRL IS PART OF THE QUICK AND DIRTY TIPS PODCAST NETWORK |
VOICEMAIL: 833-214-GIRL (833-214-4475)
Grammar Girl here. I’m Mignon Fogarty, and you can think of me as your friendly guide to the English language—writing, history, rules, and cool stuff. Today, I have a follow up on the word “despumate,” some follow-up answers to apostrophe questions, and a meaty middle about words that are spelled the same but sound different, like “invalid” and “invalid.”
And speaking of foreign languages, I got an interesting comment from a listener named Louis. He says that the familect word in episode 683, despumate, rang a bell for him. Here’s a brief recap of the story from Bruce Zuckerman:
We have a word we use in the kitchen all the time. The the verb is “despumate,” and something that needs to despumate on the stove means it needs to sit and cook it longer in order to to get better. The classic example of a food that needs to desperate or something that you cook like a soup or a stew and you put in the refrigerator overnight, and then you reheat it. It needs to despumate in order to be taste better than it did the first time.
Bruce said he didn’t know where the word came from, but Louis said, “It made me think of the Spanish word “espuma” for foam or scum. This prompted me to look it up and, whadayaknow! An archaic verb: to remove scum!”
Now I’m not suggesting that Bruce’s soups are scum, but when I cook soup for a long time, like turkey soup after Thanksgiving, I end up repeatedly removing something that looks a lot like foamy scum from the top, and when I put something like gravy in the refrigerator overnight, I often scrape the solidified fat off the top, so it does seem like maybe it’s possible that someone in Bruce’s family was aware of the word “espuma” either consciously or unconsciously. And it’s not just in Spanish either. “Spume,” S-P-U-M-E is an English word that means “foam,” and it’s from Latin, Old French, and cognate with a word in Old High German.
Etymonline says the same root gives us the name for spumante, a type of sparkling white wine, like Asti spumante, and the name for spumoni ice cream! Those both came to English through Italian.
I don’t think of spumoni ice cream as especially foamy, but one source does say that the ice cream in the layers is often mixed with whipped cream, so maybe it is. I’ve probably only had it twice in my whole life.
So I thought that was pretty cool. What Bruce viewed as a completely made-up family word, “despumate,” may have subconscious roots in existing words that at least partly make sense with how you scrape off the bad parts, maybe the foamy parts, when you cook something like soup or stew for a long time. Thanks, Louis!
Next a few people asked follow-up questions to the last two episodes we did on apostrophes, and I know that when one person has a question, many others do too.
First, Irene asked whether she needs to use apostrophes to make the days of the week or family names plural. For example, if she’s writing that they had meetings four Mondays in a row or she’s going to the Bakers’ house, does she need apostrophes? And the answer is no. The only time you use apostrophes to make things plural is when you’re writing about single letters, like A’s, B’s, and C’s. If you’re writing about four Mondays in a row, that’s just plural—“Monday” with an S at the end. And if you’re going to the house of Juan and Maria Baker, they are “the Bakers," plural with an S and no apostrophe.
But, if you’re then making “Bakers” possessive, the house of two Bakers, then you add an apostrophe after the final S. It’s the Bakers’ house. B-A-K-E-R-S-apostrophe. That’s how you make the possessive form of a plural that ends in S. Just add an apostrophe at the end. The bushes’ berries, the foxes’ whiskers, and the buddies’ plans. Those are all plural and possessive. “Bushes,” “foxes,” and “buddies” are all plural, and you make them possessive by adding a lone apostrophe to the end.
And that takes us to another question from J. In one of the past podcasts, I said I wished I had had a camera when I saw the sign that read “ladie’s night” instead of “ladies’ night,” and J. rightly said that I didn’t explain how to properly write “ladies’ night.” Well, it’s just like those foxes whiskers. “Ladies” is plural and ends with an S: L-A-D-I-E-S. So you make it possessive by adding a lone apostrophe to the end. The night of the ladies, is “ladies” L-A-D-I-E-S, apostrophe, night.
Thanks for the questions.
---
What Are Homographs, and Why Do They Exist?
One of our listeners named Gregg wrote in recently with a question. He wanted to know if there’s a term for words that change their definition when their syllable emphasis changes.
He mentioned the word “invalid” as an example. According to Merriam-Webster, the word means “being without foundation in fact or truth” when you stress the second syllable (as in, in-VAL-id), but it means “one that is sickly or disabled” when you stress the first syllable (as in, IN-val-id).
Good question, Gregg! There is a term for words that are spelled the same but have different meanings. They’re called “homographs.” The “homo” root means “same,” and the “graph” root means “write.”
And as Gregg pointed out, some homographs are pronounced differently, like “wind” (the movement of air) and “wind” (to coil something like a string around another object). Others are pronounced the same, like “odd” (meaning strange) and “odd” (meaning a number that can’t be divided evenly by two).
Wouldn’t it be easier for everyone if we just had separate words for totally separate concepts? Here’s why we don’t.
Some Homographs Have Different Etymologies
Some homographs have different etymologies. For example, the verb “match” comes from an Old English word that means “equal” or “mate,” whereas the noun “match” comes from a Greek word that meant “lamp wick”: “myxa.” (And the word “myxa,” in turn, was originally “mucus, based on [the] notion of [a] wick dangling from the spout of a lamp like snot from a nostril.” I bet you never thought that word etymology could be so disgusting!)
Another example is the word “compact.” The noun “compact” (meaning an agreement) comes from the Latin verb “compacisci,” meaning to covenant together. The past tense of this verb was “compactum.” In contrast, the verb “to compact” (meaning to press tightly together) comes from the Latin verb “compingĕre,” which had the same meaning. And the past tense of that verb was “compactus.”
Even some words that seem similar in meaning can have different origins. For example, think of the noun “bow,” as in a bow and arrow, and the verb “bow,” meaning to bend over. Both of these words suggest objects that have a curved shape. But the noun “bow” comes from the Old English word “boga,” referring to an archery bow, whereas the verb “bow” comes from the Old English word “búgan,” meaning to bend.
Some Homographs Are Created by Syllable Stress
There’s another reason two words that are spelled the same can have different sounds and meanings. It’s because English is what’s called a “stress-based language.” In this kind of language, the meaning of words can change significantly depending on what syllable in the word we stress.
For example, compare the word “MIN-ute” with “min-UTE.” These two words are spelled exactly the same but have different meanings. Same thing with “PRO-ject” and “pro-JECT.”
Stress-based languages have some predictable rules. For example, in two-syllable words, nouns and adjectives usually have the first syllable stressed. Think of the words PIC-ture, TA-ble, and FLOW-er, for example.
In contrast, two-syllable words that are verbs usually have the second syllable stressed. Think of pro-VIDE, com-POSE, or con-DUCT.
Our ability to create different meanings by stressing different syllables means that English has tons of homographs. Think of OB-ject versus ob-JECT, PRE-sent versus pre-SENT, IM-port versus im-PORT, SUS-pect versus sus-PECT. I could go on and on, but you get the idea.
Not all languages work this way. In contrast to stress-based languages like English, there are syllable-timed languages. In those languages, every syllable in a word has about the same stress. You can hear this distinction if you compare the word for “library” in English versus Spanish.
In English, we say “LI-brary,” stretching out the “I” sound and saying it more clearly than the “-brary” part. “LI-brary.”
The same word in Spanish is “biblioteca.” Each syllable in that word gets about the same emphasis. “Bib-li-o-te-ca.”
Another example is the word for trash. In English, we say “GAR-bage,” emphasis on the “GAR” and hardly saying the “uh” sound in “-bage” at all. When we swallow a mid-word vowel like that, by the way, it’s called a “schwa.”
In contrast, the Spanish word for garbage is “basura.” We pronounce each vowel sound in that word clearly. “Ba-su-ra.” None of them are swallowed.
Some Homographs Are Created Through Verb Conjugation
I’ll say one final thing about homographs. Occasionally, they are created almost accidentally when we conjugate verbs. Think about the words “sewer,” meaning a drainpipe, and “sewer,” meaning one who sews. The words aren’t related at all. They just happen to be spelled the same because we add the suffix “-er” to describe someone who does an action.
We see the same thing with “batter,” meaning a mixture of two or more ingredients, and “batter,” meaning one who swings a bat.
To sum up, homographs are words that have different meanings but are spelled the same. They may or may not have different origins and different pronunciations. Thanks again for the question, Greg!
That segment was written by Samantha Enslen who runs Dragonfly Editorial. You can find her at dragonflyeditorial.com and on Twitter @DragonflyEdit.
I’m Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl. You can find me at the home of my podcast network, QuickAndDirtyTips.com. While you’re there, check out the latest episode from our new show, Relationship Doctor: 3 ways to save your relationship from technology. That’s all. Thanks for listening.
Sources for the homograph segment.
Engvid.com. Change the stress, change the meaning: 35 words that change meaning. Accessed August 7, 2019.
Hobbs, James B. Homophones and Homographs: An American Dictionary, 4th ed. McFarland & Company, 2006. Routledge, 2015. Accessed August 7, 2019.
Marian, Jakub. English words that change their meaning depending on stress placement. Jakub Marian’s Language Learning, Science, and Art. Accessed August 7, 2019.
My English Language. Syllables and Stress. Accessed August 7, 2019.
Online Etymology Dictionary. Match. Accessed August 6, 2019.
Oxford English Dictionary Online. Bow, compact, homograph, bat, batter, sew, sewer. Subscription required, accessed August 7, 2019.
Rowe, Bruce M., Diane L. Levine. A Concise Introduction to Linguistics, 4th ed., pp. 395. Accessed August 7, 2019.
Smith, Ben T. The Rhythm of English Accents. Dialect Blog. Accessed August 7, 2019.