The Wanderer Wrote:Not precisely a homonym, but my current least favorite in that vein - due to encountering it so often, in both directions - is "affect" vs. "effect".I dunno. It seems to me that as verbs, the meanings of the two words differ primarily in degree. As nouns? Well, lemme put it this way, the only reason I know what "affect" means as a noun is that there was a psych major on a gaming board I used to frequent who used it that way a lot. Eventually (and I suspect, inevitably), he found himself obliged to explain what he meant by it. "Affect" as a noun is sufficiently obscure that I would expect that anyone wanting that meaning would make sure to get it right. I'm not so sure about people wanting to use "effect" as a noun.
The trouble is that both of them are valid as both verbs and nouns, in the same grammatical context, but they have such different meanings...
I suggested in an earlier post that we could easily have another thread for not-homophones that frequently get confused. 'Prescribe" and "proscribe" are at the top of my personal list. They're antonyms (or nearly so), so without a larger context the reader doesn't actually know which one is meant.