Homophones: "buy" & "by"

by Gabriela
(Prague)

I have just read the older part of writing exercise about explaining how to describe how to use a public telephone.

It starts with the following sentence:
"To use a public telephone you must first by a phone card"...

According to me there is a misprint and it should be:

"To use a public telephone you must first BUY a phone card"...

Am I right?

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Hi Gabriela,

Good eye! You are 100% correct and I have corrected that old page. Thank you so much for bringing that to my attention.

The Difference between "buy" and "by"

These words are homophones. 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.

In this case:

Buy: Refers to the action of getting something by paying money for it. (I would like to buy that book).

By: Shows the person or thing that does something (the book was written by Robert Frost).