Homographic Homophones and The Private Library

Here at The Private Library we are especially fond of book collections that don't take themselves too seriously.  This doesn't mean that such collections are not put together with serious intent, nor does it mean that such collections are unlikely to have scholarly or marketplace value.  It merely means that the collector forming such a collection has not been suckered into believing that really expensive books bought at really important auctions are the only books worthy of a private library.

As a case in point, consider the inexpensive, quite extensive book collections that might be built around a little wordplay.

English is one of the most difficult languages in the world for a non-native speaker to learn.  One of the reasons why this is so is that English has a large number of words that are pronounced the same as other words (i.e., they are homophones) even though they have quite different meanings.  Homophones such as pare, pair and pear, for example, have the same pronunciation but are spelled differently and have different meanings (heterographic homophones).  Other homophones -- tender (locomotive), tender (feeling) and tender (resignation), for instance -- are spelled the same and pronounced the same (homographic homophones) but have different meanings (i.e., they are homonyms).  

Got all that?  Wikipedia has a nice Venn diagram that may help you sort it out:

So what the heck does this have to do with building an inexpensive but extensive book collection?  Well, just think what an interesting private library you could build by focusing on books about subjects which are homographic homophones (spelled the same and pronounced the same, but having different meanings).  Bat and bat, for example...

  

...or row and row...

  

...or skates and skates...

  

...or bank and bank and bank...

     

...or fly and fly and fly and fly...

       

Or....  

The books depicted above do not begin to exhaust the meanings of each of the homographic homophones with which they are concerned.  And there are hundreds of other such homographic homophones in the English language.  Depending upon one's inclination, time and financial resources, such a collection could span the entire history of the printed book and cover virtually every genre imaginable.  Linguists take note...!