If something is high-class or fashionable, is it haute or oat? Does a hawk or a hock fly through the air? Is hay or hey a type of grass that is used as fodder? When you cure a sickness, do you heal or heel?
oats, pixabay
haute or haut, oat
Both haute and haut mean high-class or fashionable.
The haute restaurant seemed out of place in the small mining town in Kentucky.
Oat is a cereal grass. Oats is used as a food for humans and animals.
The horses, impatient to get their oats, stomped their feet.
Juvenile Red-tailed hawk, flickr
hawk, hock
A hawk is any of numerous birds of prey of the family Accipitridae, having a short, hooked beak, broad wings, and curved talons, often seen circling or swooping at low altitudes.
The Red-tailed hawk is probably the most common hawk in North America.
As a verb, hawk means to advertise or offer for sale. It also means to make an effort to raise phlegm from the throat; clear the throat noisily.
The young man would hawk his wares on the street corner.
Hock also has more than one meaning. As a noun, hock is the hind joint of a cow, horse, or corresponding joint in a fowl. Hock, as chiefly British, is any white Rhine wine. As a verb, hock is to pawn.
The destitute women had no choice but to hock her engagement ring.
hay, hey
Hay is grass, clover, etc, cut and dried as fodder.
The herd of goats stared with great anticipation at the hay being brought into the field.
Hey is an exclamation to call attention or to express pleasure, surprise, bewilderment, etc.
Walking through the crowd, Alexa heard someone in the mob of people yell, “Hey!”
morning haze on a golf course in Portugal, pixabay
hays, haze
Hays is more than one type of hay.
Various hays were in feeders placed throughout the pasture.
A haze is reduced visibility in the air as a result of condensed water vapor, dust, etc, in the atmosphere. As a verb, haze means to subject to ridicule or abuse.
Due to the thick, heavy haze in the air this morning, it was hard to see the road in front of me.
a girl’s heel, wikimedia commons
heal, heel
Heal means to make healthy, whole, or sound.
She cleaned her small son’s wound and then coated it with an antibiotic to help it heal.
Heel has many meanings, but I’m only going to focus on one of them The heel is the back part of the human foot, below and behind the ankle.
The nail went through her shoe and into her heel.
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