homophony

In linguistics, homophones are words that sound alike but have different meanings. They may be spelled differently, such as "here" and "hear," or spelled the same, like the two meanings of "bat" (a piece of sporting equipment or a flying mammal). The term "homophone" comes from Greek words meaning "same sound".1

Homophones can cause confusion for language learners and native speakers alike. Common examples include "your" and "you're," "compliment" and "complement," and "brake" and "break".1

It's important to distinguish homophones from homographs, which are words spelled the same but with different meanings and sometimes different pronunciations (e.g., the noun "wind" and the verb "wind"). The term homonym can sometimes refer to either homophones or homographs, though some scholars prefer to reserve it for words that are spelled the same but have different pronunciations and meanings.12