Bare with us?

One of the funniest instances of homonym confusion that I have ever heard of purportedly came from a church bulletin that said: We are renovating the Sunday school wing. Please bare with us.

Today I ran across another instance of a writer confusing “bear” and “bare.” It’s from The Herald, a Scottish newspaper site. In a story about the three young stars of the Harry Potter films, it says: “It’s been an odd five years, but it’s been great,” says Radcliffe who, with cropped hair, a trendy purple shirt and black tie (and no black-rimmed spectacles), now bares only a passing resemblance to his former young self.

Perhaps young Daniel Radcliffe was revealing more about himself.

In both instances, of course, the word should have been “bear.”

This article was originally posted by the Raleigh News & Observer, a subsidiary of The McClatchy Co.; is posted here to provide continuity; and is copyright © 2011 The News & Observer Publishing Company, which reserves the right to remove this post.