While making sure I was using a word properly, I came across an article by Columbia Journalism Review on homophones; words that sound alike but are spelled differently or mean different things.
https://www.cjr.org/language_corner/callus-callous.php
They were writing a mea culpa:
A FEW WEEKS AGO, when we wrote about the confusion over the homophones "poor," "pour," and "pore," we said that another anatomical use of "pore" was "a type of callous that forms at the site of a healing fracture."
More than one hardened reader called us out. We were careless to use "callous" and not "callus." We made a homophone error in an article about homophone errors. How embarrassing, and ironic.
It's an easy mistake to make, though we should have caught it before readers did. After all, the adjective "callous" means "being hardened and thickened," as Merriam-Webster says. But "callus" is a noun, meaning "a thickening of or a hard thickened area on skin or bark."
How great is that? They made a homophone error in an article about homophone errors!
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