People Twitter

Dearest creature in Creation, Studying English pronunciation, I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.

It will keep you, Susy, busy, Make your head with heat grow dizzy; Tear in eye your dress you'll tear. So shall I! Oh, hear my prayer,

Pray, console your loving poet, Make my coat look new, dear, sew it? Just compare heart, beard and heard, Dies and diet, lord and word,

Sword and sward, retain and Britain, (Mind the latter, how it's written!) Made has not the sound of bade, Say—said, pay—paid, laid, but plaid.

Now I surely will not plague you With such words as vague and ague, But be careful how you speak, Say break, steak, but bleak and streak,

Previous, precious; fuchsia, via; Pipe, snipe, recipe and choir, Cloven, oven; how and low; Script, receipt; shoe, poem, toe,

Hear me say devoid of trickery, daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore, Branch, ranch, measles, topsails, aisles, Missiles, similes, reviles,

Finally: which rhymes with "enough," Though, through, plough, cough, hough, or tough? Hiccough has the sound of "cup"... My advice is—give it up!

• A shortened version of The Chaos by Dutch poet Gerard Nolst Trenité

Mostly the opposite situation to your comment since they're spelled the same but pronounced differently, but it feels relevant

It could be a brain fart, but 'compound'...?