aired, erred

The words aired, erred sound the same but have different meanings and spellings. Why do aired, erred sound the same even though they are completely different words?

The answer is simple: aired, erred are homophones of the English language.

aired
  1. :: adjective

    abounding in fresh air.

  2. :: adjective

    made public by radio or television.

  3. :: verb

    Simple past tense and past participle of <xref>air</xref>.

  4. :: adjective

    open to or abounding in fresh air

erred
  1. :: verb

    Simple past tense and past participle of <xref>er</xref>.

  2. :: verb

    Simple past tense and past participle of <xref>err</xref>.

Definitions from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English., from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License., from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. and Wordnik.

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About Homophones

Homophones (literally "same sound") are usually defined as words that share the same pronunciation, regardless of how they are spelled.

If they are spelled the same then they are also homographs (and homonyms); if they are spelled differently then they are also heterographs (literally "different writing").