English is filled with words that sound alike but differ dramatically in spelling and meaning. Such words can be deceptively troublesome because pronunciation offers little assistance. A speaker may confidently use the correct word in conversation while hesitating when the same term appears on a page. Few examples illustrate this linguistic predicament better than pallet, palette, and palate. They are homophones in many varieties of English, meaning that they are generally pronounced alike or very similarly despite having distinct spellings and meanings. Yet their semantic territories could scarcely be more different. One belongs to logistics and warehousing, another to painting and design, while the third concerns taste and the anatomy…