Words with most homophones?

Factual Questions
81

bar-[number] English horserace betting
bar-2 and bar-12 [call out of bet in craps]
h-bar [pronunciation of Planck Constant/2*(ħ)]*
barre [in ballet]
“bar” [the word itself–kind of meta meta there]
bar [a stroke through a symbol]
bar [what you put your feet on in a bar]

That’s all I came up with.
These I simply stole from Wiki:

Bar (law), in a legal context has three possible meanings: the division of a courtroom between its working and public areas; the process of qualifying to practice law; and the legal profession
[ul]
[li]Bar examination, an examination conducted at regular intervals to determine whether a candidate is qualified to practice law in a given jurisdiction[/li][li]Bar association, a professional body of lawyers. Some bar associations are responsible for the regulation of the legal profession in their jurisdiction; others are professional organizations dedicated to serving their members;[/li][/ul]
Bar (computer science), a metasyntactic variable, like foo
[ul]
[li]Bar (tropical cyclone), a layer of dark cloud near the horizon[/li][li]Bar (unit), a unit of pressure defined as 100 kilopascals[/li][li]BAR domain, a protein domain[/li][li]Base Address Register, a concept in computer hardware design[/li][li]Bar (landform), another term for the landform known as a shoal[/li][li]Bar (river morphology), an elevated region of sand or gravel deposited by the flow of a river[/li][li]Bar, a notation used in X-bar theory in linguistics[/li][/ul]
Bar (law), in a legal context has three possible meanings: the division of a courtroom between its working and public areas; the process of qualifying to practice law; and the legal profession
Bar examination, an examination conducted at regular intervals to determine whether a candidate is qualified to practice law in a given jurisdiction
[ul]
[li]Bar association, a professional body of lawyers. Some bar associations are responsible for the regulation of the legal profession in their jurisdiction; others are professional organizations dedicated to serving their members; in many cases, they are both[/li][/ul]
** Science and computing**

[ul]
[li]Bar (computer science), a metasyntactic variable, like foo[/li][li]Bar (tropical cyclone), a layer of dark cloud near the horizon[/li][li]Bar (unit), a unit of pressure defined as 100 kilopascals[/li][li]BAR domain, a protein domain[/li][li]Base Address Register, a concept in computer hardware design[/li][li]Bar (landform), another term for the landform known as a shoal[/li][li]Bar (river morphology), an elevated region of sand or gravel deposited by the flow of a river[/li][li]Bar, a notation used in X-bar theory in linguistics[/li][/ul]

[ul]
[li]Bar (river), France[/li][li]Bar, Corrèze, France[/li][li]Bar, Meuse, France, former seat of the Counts and Dukes of Bar[/li][li]Bar, Razavi Khorasan, Iran[/li][li]Bar, Montenegro, a coastal town in Montenegro[/li][li]Bar, Tibet[/li][li]Bar, Ukraine[/li][li]Bár, Hungary[/li][li]Bar, a historic duchy of both the Holy Roman Empire and the crown of France; see Counts and Dukes of Bar[/li][/ul]
Plus a whole bunch of names of Israeli’s. (“Bar” Aramaic for “son of.”)

82

fair (good looking)
fair (unbiased)
fair (commercial gathering)
fare (fee)
fare (experience? e.g. to fare nicely/poorly)

83

Run has 150 definitions, not including use in idiomatic or verb phrases. I’ve had dictionaries in which a full page and a half was dedicated to run.

84

die (singular of dice)
die (cease living)
die (machine tool)
dye (coloring agent)

85

raise
raze
rays plural of ray
ray’s belonging to a ray (e.g a ray’s phase)

pretty darn close:
race

maybe:
Res multiple Re notes (from Solfège: Do Re Mi, etc.)

86

I think “Londonderry Aire” is simply an erroneous spelling of “Londonderry Air”. Google treats it as such, and after looking at several online dictionaries I cannot find any that give a relevant definition of “aire”, whereas “air” most certainly can mean a melody (cf. “air on a g string”) - but this is, I think, quite clearly derivative of “air” as the gas mixture that comprises the atmosphere, and which carries sounds, and so not really a different word. (Google does find a few examples of “Londonderry Aire” if you insist on searching for that form, but that is no evidence that it is not a spelling mistake or malapropism.)

“Aire” is a word. It is the name of a river in the north of England (its valley is where airedale terriers come from), and, also, according to Wiktionary, an Estonian female name, but presumably proper nouns do not count.

87

Also: -

Ere: Before (poetic)
E’er: Ever (poetic)
Eyre: The circuit travelled by an itinerant judge in medieval times
Ayre: A shingle beach

If we’re allowing proper nouns, there’s also: -

Ayr: Town in south-western Scotland
Ayer: Town in northern Massachussets
Aire: Various rivers in England, Australia, France and Switzerland

88

Not exactly. Dartford is on the estuary and Estuary English is the usual dialect there. However, Mick was posh, so was also capable of speaking RP. Both are his real native dialects.

In Wales:

Here
Hear
Ear
Year

Plus, I think, though someone correct me if I’m wrong:

You’re
Your
Yore

89

But in that case it has two syllables: ai-reh.

90

Here, you run into a number of dialect conflicts. In the US, the lion’s share of speakers pronounce “err” exactly like “air”. But “er”, synonym to “um” is a non-rhotic spelling that may work in Britain but not in a rhotic dialect – in US, the same word is more often spelled “uh”, at least by the native rhotics (I think there is still a sizable non-rhotic contingent in Massachusetts and Alabama).

91

OK.

The British river is pronounced like the stuff in the atmosphere, though.

92

If we’re allowing proper nouns, then there’s Ayr - I can’t get my head around the homophony of err, though - do people who pronounce err and air the same also find bed and bade homophonous?

93

Late to the party, but could I add

Fish
Fiche
Phish
Ghoti

Zombies might like fish, I’ve heard it’s brain food!

94

It’s pronounced both ways. I always thought that “ur” was more historically correct, as it’s the pronunciation I most often hear from overeducated classics types.

Only in the Foreign category! But you get extra points. :slight_smile:

Those are much more easily counted. The argument on such lists would be over whether they’re pronounced the same, and the answer should be “yes” if there’s any significant population that does so.

In NZ, it’s a lot like how I pronounce “pin”, but still different, since it’s an NZ accent and I’m from Michigan. Closer to “peen” than my “pin” is, but closer to my “pin” than my “peen” is. No puns, please.

I was trying to learn the correct pronunciation of my friend’s Vietnamese name, “Nguyen”, which we normally say as “Win”. The closest I got, she said “No, that man who live on mountain.”

Right, but a lot of people prunounce both as “ur”.

Extra points! Except that I’ve never seen those other two words.

95

Since this has been resuscitated, I was recently thinking of one that includes proper names.

Bear, grizzly
Bare, Bobby, country singer
Baer, Max, boxer
Bayer aspirin
Bexar County, Texas
Behr paint
Bair, Doug. baseball player
Berr, Henri, French philosopher
Beir, Fred, TV character actor
Behar, Sasha, British actress
Boehr, Maria, Canadian fashion model
Bert, commune in Aller, France
Ber, Asian fruit = jujube

96

I pronounce “Bayer”, as in aspirin, with two distinct syllables. And I’m not certain about the correct pronunciation, but I would put a detectable aspiration in the ones with an H.

It’s also way too easy to include proper nouns.

97

Ayr - a town in Scotland

98

Regarding “pin” and “pin”, here in NC I have a friend who (to my Yankee ear) says the two words the same, but also (to my ear) gives both words two syllables: “pee-in”. She manages to say my name (Jeff) with three syllables: “Jee-yay-eff”. Go figure!

She sounds a lot like Paula Deen, except never uses the N-word. :wink:

99

Sue: name
sue: legal action
Sioux: Indians
Sou: french coin
Sault (St. Marie): City

100

key - used to unlock or decode
quay - dock
chi - mystic energy used in martial arts
qi - also mystic energy, this time a term from Chinese traditional medicine
kee - kilogram abbreviation (first syllable)
kie - cattle/kine

although really only the first is a general use word. The others are either rare, only partially adopted into English, slangy or archaic.