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This article is about the term in linguistics, for the musical concept see homophony.
A homophone is a word which is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning, for example: carat, caret, and carrot. Homophones may be spelled differently, but the term also applies to different words that sound the same and are also spelled identically, such as "rose" (flower) and "rose" (past tense of "rise"). However the more precise term for the latter class of words is homonym. The term may also be used to apply to units shorter than words, such as letters or group of letters which are pronounced the same as another letter or group of letters.
Homophones and homonyms are often used to create puns, deceive the reader (as in crossword puzzles) or to suggest multiple meanings. The last usage is common in poetry and creative literature. An example of this is seen in Dylan Thomas' radio play "Under Milk Wood": "The shops in mourning" where 'mourning' can be heard as 'mourning' or 'morning'. Another vivid example is Thomas Hood's poem "Faithless Sally Brown":
His death, which happen'd in his berth,
At forty-odd befell:
They went and told the sexton, and
The sexton toll'd the bell.
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