A homophone is a word that sounds the same as another word but has a different meaning and/or spelling. Homophones are two or more words that share the same pronunciation, but which have different spellings or meanings. The two words may be spelled the same, for example, rose and rose, or spelled differently, as in rain, reign, and rein. Homophones that are spelled the same are deemed both homographs and homonyms, e.g. the word read, as in "He is well read" (he is very learned) vs. the sentence "I read that book" (I have finished reading that book). Homophones that are spelled differently are also called heterographs, e.g. to, too, and two. Homophones can be tricky to use correctly, and there are thousands of English homophones. Its hard to pin down an exact number because some words are homophones depending on regional accents.