kneel/ Neil, bury/berry, whore/hoar, flour/flower, cellar/seller, earnest/Ernest

Homophones: words that sound the same but are spelt differently and mean two different things. They often crop up in jokes. Not to mention the title of Oscar Wilde’s play which poked fun at the seriousness of his time: The Importance of Being Ernest.

Here’s the sad but true tale of an unfortunate language teacher in Utah who got sacked for writing on the school website about homophones. The school did not want to be associated with gay sex!
http://www.theweek.co.uk/us/59766/utah-teacher-fired-after-homophone-blog
I just wonder how their biology teacher refers to the species to which we belong.
It could have been worse. Thank heavens he didn’t mention the devil’s own word category: sin-onyms. They’d have burnt him at the stake!