Okay, I found out something, and I can't shut up about it so you're gonna have to deal with me.

A desert island is not a desert island.

By which I mean, a desert island can be lush and covered with water, with big rainforest trees.

It is not an island that is a desert.

It is desert…

an adjective that I have been using my WHOLE LIFE without knowing that it exists!

“Desert” means uninhabited or deserted.

This word, D-E-S-E-R-T, has four different definitions and two different pronunciations.

One, desert: noun, a place without much water.

Desert, two: adjective, uninhabited.

Desert: verb, where you abandon something, like a you're a deserter.

And four, desert: noun, the thing you deserve.

Another word I've been using my whole life without knowing IT EXISTS!

When I say, “You got your just deserts,” I don't mean, “You got your tasty after meal treat.”

In this case, “just” means like you're fair, and “deserts” means “the things you deserve.”

So the “just” part of this idiom is completely irrelevant because every desert is something that is just,

it is what you deserve definitionally!

And all of this is to say nothing of “dessert” with the extra S, the delicious thing

that you eat after you're done with dinner.

This led me into a place that was terrible, and you won't find out why until the very end.

But of course, it being English, we have words for all of these things.

We have words for words that sound or look like each other but don't mean the same thing.

So there are three things here that words might have in common.

There's the meaning, there's how they sound, and there's how they're spelled.

Now in this situation we're talking about words that all have different meaning,

so I'm just gonna discard that for now.

And talk about the suffixes that we use for words that have different meaning but are

pronounced the same or are written the same.

When we're talking about pronunciation, we're talking about how they sound, so we use the suffix -phone.

And when we're talking about how they look, we're talking about writing, so we use the suffix -graph.

And then we have our prefixes: we have hetero- for different and homo- for same.

So a homophone is something that sounds the same but has a different definition,

and a homograph is something that looks the same but has a different definition.

And then you have the word that we talk about, which is “homonym,”

and that's when BOTH of those things are true.

So far this makes sense.

Not super easy to get your head around, but it makes sense.

Homonym: same pronunciation, same spelling, but different meaning

like “desert” (sand) and “desert” (abandoned).

And all homonyms are also homophones and homographs.

But some words are only homophones, and some words are only homographs.

Like “desert” (to abandon) and “dessert” (sweet). They sound the same, but they're spelled different.

And this means that they are also something called a heterograph, meaning they look different.

And then, my friends, there are things that are spelled the same but sound different.

Homographs, like “desert” (sand) and “desert” (to abandon).

These things sound different.

They are heterophones.

And they are called heteronyms.

[SEETHING]

This took me a HALF AN HOUR OF MY LIFE to figure out!

WHY AREN'T THEY CALLED HETEROPHONES?

John, I'll see you on Tuesday.

Also, we recently did a thing where there was a map and you could put a pin in it

and tell us where you live for when we're going on tour and then it broke!

So we had a bunch of pins, and it was beautiful! I really enjoyed looking at it,

but now it is no longer useful data. I don't know what happened!

So there's a link to a form in the description. Please fill it out!

Let us know where we should come when we go on tour next!

We're gonna have a weird and fantastic time wherever we end up going,

but we need to know where to go! Thanks.