A Few Homonyms and Oddities

I recently came across some examples of homonyms and oddities of English language that caught my attention while writing for work. Nothing revolutionary here, just a few curiosities I enjoyed stumbling across, but still worth a quick mention since they don’t seem to be talked about a lot outside a few niche online forum discussions.

Gleam vs. Glean: At first glance, “gleam” and “glean” look like they should be related. But “Gleam” refers to something shiny or bright e.g., sunlight “gleams” off a lake. “Glean”, on the other hand, is about slowly gathering or extracting information e.g., to “glean” insights from data.

Jibe with vs. Jive with: I heard someone at work say, “That insight doesn’t jive with the data.” As a sucker for colorful wordplay, I dug deeper to learn how this metaphor seemingly about cohesive dancing came to be. Turns out, the correct expression is actually “jibe with,” meaning to match up or align. While “jive” is a type of dance or music for some reason the word “jibe” is used to indicate whether or not insights and data get along. Still, imagining insights and data awkwardly dancing together is amusing enough that the phrasing “jive with” almost makes sense to me anyway and I would not mind if someone used it incorrectly.

Artifact vs. Artefact: This isn’t technically a homonym but an interesting spelling difference. Americans spell the word as “artifact,” while the British use “artefact.” It’s a minor variation yet somehow entertaining like the classic “aluminum” vs. “aluminium” variation albeit a much less intensely discussed one.