LEND ME YOUR EAR: PLAYING WITH WORDS HAS GONE ON FO REVER

Anyone out there ever hear of heteronyms? Wordmaster James Kilpatrick tossed this out-of-town concoction my way recently as if it were an everyday word.

All other nyms have long been familiar to me, but "heteronym" was as foreign to me as a tune in what passes for music today.

According to The American Heritage, Second College Edition, heteronyms are a division of homophones that are spelled the same but have different meanings and different pronunciations. To my knowledge, no dictionary or encyclopedia of language includes "heterophone," but please do not pass this observation on to AT&T. If there is another phone we can do without, it's a phone of a make-believe color.

American Heritage lists "row" as an example of a heteronym. This nym has only one spelling, but two pronunciations and more than two meanings. If we want to row, row, row a boat, the pronunciation of the verb is obvious. If we sit on the front row in church or at a concert or wherever, the pronunciation is the same though "row" now serves as a noun. But if a restless child is in the row and wants out of it, the little rebel is likely to create a "row." This "row" rhymes with "cow." How now, brown cow?

A cow is a bovine, not a heteronym, though a mature female pig qualifies: How now brown "sow"? But if we are thinking of sowing seeds in a garden or in the minds of our readers, "sow" rhymes with "grow." And if we sow seeds intended for food or simply to please the eye, we will doubtlessly consider taste.

Some people like the taste of flowers, but I can't abide the taste of flower teas, so the flowers in my mythical garden are not for drinking or eating. Ferdinand the Bull loved to smell the flowers, but I never met him in a restaurant though I once watched a young cousin of his bow down disgracefully to snack on a neighbor's sweet william. If I'd caught either of them rooting in my petunias, I'd have scared the appetite out of them with my bow and arrow.

Catch the heteronym there? The verb "bow" rhymes with "cow," but the noun rhymes with "go." "Go" means get-outa-here and do as I say, or suffer the slings of my bow and arrow.

"Go" is not a heteronym, but what about "do"? In Cattleland, "do" rhymes with "moo," and a moo that sounds tuneful indicates that cows have an ear for music. But to us in Peopleland, music begins with a different "do" -- one that rhymes with "blow" -- "do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do."

In Peopleland, music is made with a "bow" that rhymes with "blow" -- the adjunct for playing the violin or any stringed instrument. But "blow" reminds us of "Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn," and a horn is also for making music. Obviously, playing with heteronyms creates a domino effect, an expression high on our current list of buzz words. And Peoplemusic, whether played with strings or horns or even strikes and bangs, brings us together for music in a concert hall.

In the concert hall, if that little beastie we met a few paragraphs ago is dragged in and repeats his performance, he's sure to be dragged out again and punished for his outrageous CONduct. But this would not be punishment for him. Only for his parents or keepers, and for the concert master who must proceed to conDUCT no matter the glitch contrived by the unwelcome star of the moment. At least the little show-off would have added a bit of People percussion to the orchestra.

Many conductors proDUCE the music they choose to conDUCT, but few think of their productions as PROduce. To us, PROduce is a noun -- lettuce or string beans and other fresh PROduce -- usually proDUCED some distance from the concert hall.

James Kilpatrick, master word-juggler and author of three books and a weekly column on the use of language, declares he is now up to his hetero in heteronyms. I still don't know where our anatomical hetero is, but the language game it inspires is truly infectious.

Playing with words has been a popular game ever since man had to vocalize his thoughts because he had his hands full. His first word was probably only a grunt. Today's efforts demonstrate how far our language has traveled since, and it cheers us to have brought it with us into the concert hall. May today's melodies linger on.

~Aileen Lorberg is a language columnist for the Southeast Missourian.