Grammar Girl: For Writers and Language Lovers.
Why English creates so many words spelled the same. Why we say 'ye olde' instead of 'the old.'
This episode of Grammar Girl explains the origin of "ye olde" by examining vanished English letters like thorn, eth, and yogh. It also discusses homographs, words spelled identically with different meanings, using "compact" as an example. The segment on homographs was written by…