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Scytales are one of the oldest forms of cryptography.

Many years ago, I visited the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C. One of the most interesting exhibits talked about the history of espionage and the need for governments to keep sensitive information hidden to maintain national security.

Cryptography is the study of techniques used for secure communication. It comes from the Greek roots crypt- meaning secret, and -graphy, meaning to write. Cryptography literally means secret writing!

Scytales are the one of the oldest forms of cryptography. Scytale comes from the Greek word, skútalon, which means baton or cylinder.

Secret messages were written on parchment or leather that was wound around a cylinder of a particular size. The recipient of the message could only decode it by wrapping it around an identical cylindrical rod. Scytales were created and used by the Spartans during military campaigns.

The International Spy Museum is one of the secret treasures of Washington, D.C. If you ever get a chance to visit, I highly recommend it.

The English language is full of homonyms, or more specifically homographs, homophones, heterographs, and heteronyms. This is enough to make your head spin! Such words serve to make English one of the most difficult languages to learn. They are the bane of my existence, and probably yours too.

Homonyms are words that are pronounced the same or have the same spelling but have different definitions. The word homonym comes from the Greek roots homo- meaning same and -nym meaning name. Homographs and homophones are a subset of homonyms.

Homographs are words that have the same spelling, but have different meanings. The Greek root -graph- means to write, so homograph can be translated into “same writing.” An example would be “bat” (animal) and “bat” (baseball bat).

Heteronyms are a class of homographs. The Greek root hetero- means other or different so heteronyms are words with “different names.” They share the same spelling, but have different pronunciations and meanings. An example is “minute” (time unit) and “minute” (pronounced mīn.yüt – meaning very small).

Homophones are words that sound the same but are defined differently. Homophone literally means “same sound” (-phon is the Greek root for sound). If the homophones are spelled the same, they are also homographs but if they are spelled differently, they are called heterographs.

Heterographs are words that have “different writing”. They have the same pronunciation, but different spellings and definitions. “Knight” (soldier) and “night” (evening) are examples of heterographs.

For the next several posts, I’d like to delve further into this category of English words. To help me explore this topic, I’ve enlisted the help of some of my fellow National Spelling Bee participants who have volunteered to write about a pair of words that they find to be particularly irksome.

Are there any homonyms that always manage to trick you?