Homographs

This topic has not yet undergone editorial review

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

בואי, קומי, שירי, שובי – When the the accent is on the first syllable, these are feminine imperatives ("go"); when the accent is on the final syllable they are possessive nouns ("my going")
באה, קמה, שרה, שבה – 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" bu is actually "they built".

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.
–

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 "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".

Dictionary:Homographs/0