Heteronyms

Heteronyms are words that can be pronounced two different ways, and the pronunciation changes the meaning of the word. The name comes up, I think, because in a sense they are two distinct words that happen to be written in the same way, hence the Greek roots "homo" and "graph" meaning "same" and "writing."

I thought this up on a road trip with a friend and we spent a half hour or so trying to think of examples. Since then I found an exhaustive list based on grepping the OED which removed whatever fun was in that.

Nevertheless, here is a simpler list of the words that I think are the most interesting examples in that they represent words with absolutely no semantic relation, unlike words like "house" or "extract" with related meanings.

• axes
• bass
• bow
• buffet
• does
• lead
• minute
• moped
• putting
• sewer
• skied
• sow
• tear
• wind
• wound