People can post whatever they like of course, but I was really after homophones that are spelt differently, i.e. heterographs. However, any words with the same sound but different meanings are homophones, regardless of whether they’re spelt the same. I don’t think contractions such as “they’re” count, because they are not single words. Acronyms are a grey area, because some of them have become legitimate words.
I can’t think of the proper way to ask this questions, but I’ll try.
I can’t recall hearing anyone pronounce pen and pin in the same way. Would your pronunciation of both match the way I say pin, the way I say pen, or something else?
How do you pronounce those words?
I live in east Texas. Both words are pronounced the same. They rhyme with tin, sin, and kin.
:smack: This was an assholish post. I apologize. 
bore - as with al gore
bore - as with a drill
bore - meaning gun caliber
bore - meaning tidal bore
bore - as with mother mary with jesus
bore - down with a truck
bore - frodo with the ring
boar - male pig?
In what dialect is “bough” homophonous with any of the others (besides “bow” in, for example, the nautical sense)?
I thought we were discussing homophony, not polysemy.
Add “eaux” to the list and this set is in second place, behind air/err/heir/aire/are/ere/e’er/Eyre/Eire (plus hair/hare/hayer for h-dropping dialects), which are certainly homophonous in many dialects. I don’t think anyone’s going to beat that one.
Maybe for you, but not for everyone.
the OP wasn’t very accrurate about that, i think. “different spellings AND meanings.”
Not where I’m from but in some places:
Cocks
Corks
Caulks
Cox
I hope it’s not egregious hijack to mention that Thai has many homophones to the untrained foreigner ear. The words for near and far sound the same to me! :smack: Noi may be the most common woman’s nickname, but for many years I didn’t realize that there were two different Noi’s, distinguishable to a Thai ear.
The sound “cow” (khau) has several common meanings (enter, him/her, rice, white, mountain, horn, bank), some distinguishable to a Thai ear but not always my ear. White mountain (“cow cow” or khau khaau) involves a duration difference I don’t hear, though I can see a mouth-shape difference!
Eh? All the words in your list are spelt the same.
ok, i’m wrong. fun though. 
If you allow words that have the same spelling, i could just use set. It has 464 definitions, and even if you don’t count all of them as separate words, you still have quite a few.
^
hey, i remember that from the guiness book back in the 80s. good one.
If you’re not in the south, pen and pin have the same vowel sounds as bed and bid, respectively.
Quoth marc_bolan00:
Several of these are the same meaning, even. A tidal bore is the same bore as a gun bore, which I think is directly derived from drill. And Mary carried Jesus just as Frodo carried the Ring-- She carried him in a different place, but it’s still carrying.
To be specific, Glaswegian seems to be one, to my ear at least, as is Estuary English.
Quite. When Mick says “Keith”, that’s his actual Dartford upbringing. When he’s says “Keef”, he’s putting on a Cockney (“Estuary”) accent, as has been his wont over the decades.
I thought of this one because of the Olympics 
medal
metal
meddle
mettle
And then I googled “most homphones” since I was curious if there was a word with more than four. I was happy to see that “air” had 7 or 8 or however many, but most people in this thread couldn’t beat three. Saw it hadn’t been posted here yet so I just had to post it. (there aren’t many legit 4somes here, tons of 3somes)