Thread: Words that look the same but have different meanings!?

This certainly exists in other languages too (English for example) but it seems to be particularly common in Russian. LOL - замок !! (I was tricked! )
Let's make a list!

замок lock
замок castle

What are some other ones?

They are called omonyms.
норка (a small animal and a hole in the ground)
ключ (a water spring or a key - funny that a spring is an omonym too in Engilsh)
наряд (a work order or a garment)
ласка (a small animal or tenderness)
колода (a card deck or a block for chopping meat)
косяк (a doorframe or a flock or birds, or a swarm of fish or even a joint with marijuana)

There are very many of such words.

Edit: Johanna, point taken.

Remember it's for learners...
Got to indicate which meaning has which accent!
I just know one of these and now I am not sure I have the accent right...

The fist one that came in mind is "лук" (means both "onion" and "bow"). And since there is only one vowel they doesn't differ even by stress. These are so called "homonyms". There are some more of them in Russian but not that many.

Homonyms are words that are exactly the same and even have the same accents but different meanings. They are abundant in any language. Finding them is easy: open any vocabulary and see meaning 1, meaning 2, ...

In Russian things are more complicated than in English because there are inflections and different forms of the same or different words may coincide (homoforms).

Example
три -
1)three
2) rub, frictionize (imperative from тереть)
etc.

As for words that are the same but accent and meanings... words in Russian in average are longer than in English so there are more accents are possible.

Originally Posted by Johanna

замок lock
замок castle

Some time ago I was really surprised to know that in German these two very different beings are also described by one word "Schloß" (Schloss).

мука - flour.
мука - torture.

плачу - I pay.
плачу - I cry.

Originally Posted by CoffeeCup

Originally Posted by Johanna

замок lock
замок castle

Some time ago I was really surprised to know that in German these two very different beings are also described by one word "Shloß" (Shloss).

Wow, how interesting. Actually I thought lock in German was Sperr and that schlossen was more like closing. But I am not very good at German and I am not sure about that. Either way it's surely more than a co-incidence!

I didn't know there was a word for such similar looking words!

стрелки — riflemans (singular — стрелок)
стрелки — arrows (like these: ←↑→↓↔↕), clock hands (singular — стрелка)

Вспоминаем: «Косил косой косой косой».

Коса — plait, tress, braid.
Коса — scythe.
Коса — spit.
Коса = косая = покосившаяся — lopsided, leaning, tilted, askew.
Коса = косая = косоглазая — [she is] squint-eyed.