Dictionary:Homographs/0

Homographs

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Stress

Some words look identical except that the stress is on a different syllable:

• בואי, קומי, שירי, שובי etc. – When the the accent is on the first syllable, these are feminine imperatives ("come"); when the accent is on the final syllable they are possessive nouns ("my coming")
•  באה, קמה, שרה, שבה etc. – These verbs can be either past tense (when the final syllable is stressed) or present tense (when the first syllable is stressed).
• בנו – When the first syllable of the word is stressed, this means "in us"; when the last syllable is stressed, it is the plural past tense of the root "בנה" (they built).  See, though, Yechezkel 27:5 where the stress is pushed back a syllable (נסוג אחור), so that it looks like it should mean "in us" while it actually means "they built".
• שבו – When the accent is on the first syllable the verb stems from the root "שוב", to return; when it is on the last syllable it stems from the root "שבה", to take captive.

 

Mappik

Some words are indistinguishable except for the fact that there is a mappik in one of their letters:

• אִשָּׁה (woman) vs  אִישָׁהּ (her husband) – See Bemidbar 5:29. 
• השקה (gave to drink) vs. הִשְׁקָהּ (give her to drink)  – Compare Bemidbar 5:24 and 27.

Dagesh

• The word "עֲרוּמִּים" (masculine, plural of naked) looks almost identical to "עֲרוּמִים" (masculine, plural of crafty), except that the first word has a dagesh in the "מ".
• Maidservant or Arm? – See Shemot Rabbah on Shemot 2:5, reading "אמתה" there to mean "her hand (cubit)" and Rashi pointing out that if so, it should have had a dagesh in the "מ".  Without a dagesh, the word means "her maidservant".
• The word יַמִּים with a dagesh means sea, while "יַמִם" without a dagesh is a type of animal.

Identical

• אור – The word "אור" can be either a noun (light) or a verb (to give light). Usually, context is enough to disambiguate.  Thus in Bereshit 44:3, "הַבֹּקֶר אוֹר" clearly means: "the morning dawned (i.e. became/gave light)" with the word serving as a verb, while "אוֹר גָּדוֹל" in Yeshayahu 9: must mean "the great light", with the word "אור" serving as a noun.  However in the phrase "עַד אוֹר הַבֹּקֶר" (Melakhim II 7:9 and elsewhere), the meaning is ambiguous and the words can mean either: "until the morning dawned" or: "until the morning light".¹
• בַּחֲלוֹם / בָּאֳנִיָּה – The word בַּחֲלוֹם can mean either "in a boat" or "in the boat". Similarly, בָּאֳנִיָּה (and בׇּאֳנִיּוֹת) can mean either "in the ship/s" or "in a ship / in ships".²

¹ Practically, though, there is no major difference in meaning between the two options.

² Though normally when there is no definite object marker, the opening "ב" would get a sheva, since there cannot be two consecutive shevas, the vowel under the "ב" is lengthened to a patach or kamatz making these words identical in form to when there is a definite object marker.