Homophones

[via Wikipedia]

A homophone is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning. The words may be spelled the same, such as rose (flower) and rose (past tense of "rise"), or differently, such as carat, caret, and carrot, or to, two, and too. Homophones that are spelled the same are also both homographs and homonyms.[1] Homophones that are spelled differently are also called heterographs. The term "homophone" may also apply to units longer or shorter than words, such as phrases, letters or groups of letters that are pronounced the same as another phrase, letter or group of letters. The word derives from the Greek homo- (ὁμο-), "same", and phōnḗ (φωνή), "voice, utterance". The opposite is heterophone: similar, but not phonetically identical words.

Examples of "oronyms" (which may only be true homophones in certain dialects of English) include:
"ice cream" vs. "I scream" (as in the popular song "I scream. You scream. We all scream for ice cream.")
"euthanasia" vs. "Youth in Asia"
"depend" vs. "deep end"
"the sky" vs. "this guy" (most notably as a mondegreen in Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix)
"four candles" vs. "fork handles"
"sand which is there" vs. "sandwiches there"
"example" vs. "egg sample" (my favorite)
"some others" vs. "some mothers"
"night rain" vs. "night train"
"minute" vs. "my newt"
"Long Island" vs. "lawn guy land" (Justin's favorite)
"real eyes, realize, real lies"

Oh look! Brian McKnight wants to teach you about homophones.