Sound and Sense, 73

SOUND AND SENSE:

We’re moving next to the homophone: a word pronounced the same as another but differing in meaning, whether spelled the same way or not, as heir and air. So … contronyms are words that have contradictory meanings (sanctiion = approve and disapprove; homophones sound alike but to not mean the same—and often are not spelled the same, either.

1. flour (noun): powder made from grain (verb): to cover something with flour

2. flower (noun): the part of a plant that is often brightly colored; to produce flowers (verb): to grow or develop in a successful way

He worked with flour all his life—

A baker (with a baker’s wife).

His floured floors revealed his art—

Though cleaning up was not his part.

His wife loved flowers—every kind.

And bought each type that she could find.

And so their love just flowered—till

His wife had really had her fill

Of cleaning flour from the floor.

She left a note: “I can’t take more!

I'm sick of all this cleaning up!”

And so the baker bought a pup,

A creature kind—he named it Clay.

It licked the floors up, every day.

The wife had met a florist (hot)—

So spouses got what they had sought.