Word 2: ἀργός with long alpha (contraction from ἀεργός): not-working, idle, etc… Can be distinguished by the long ἀ (from ἀε).
These two words fall into one category: words that spell similarly due to contraction (in this case, with alpha privative). I’m looking for more examples of word-groups in this category.
More interestingly (?): I’m looking for other examples of other word groups that spell the same in text but have different meanings that can/could be distinguished - as far as we know - in pronunciation. The reason for the spelling colliding with a different word could be, maybe:
contraction (as mentioned),
diaeresis (for example swapping ϊ with ι in some verb forms could maybe change the meaning… though I can’t think of any examples right now),
crasis,
dialects, (though that should be less of a problem than the examples above),
Well in English I suppose an example would be “read” present (long e) vs. past (short e). But I don’t really see the point of looking for Greek analogs. Context will disambiguate, just as it disambiguates “read” in written English. So with ἀργός in Greek. αὑτός vs. αὐτός can be tricky though.
Interesting question. I assume you don’t want different conjugations of the same word differing only in accentuation, like παίδευσαι (imperative) and παιδεύσαι (optative), παιδεῦσαι (infinitive).
I would have thought that there would be a study somewhere, or a list, of ancient greek homographs or homonyms. But I’m not turning one up. BDAG uses the term homograph in two places. One is in regard to this pair and the other in respect of προσφάγιον but gives little detail. LSJ doesn’t use the term. homonym is rarer still.
If I stop looking in Ancient Greek I and just search for Greek homonyms I found an interesting page listing a few modern cases of homophones. Of course that will be a problem over time with the changing of pronunciation and not really what you were after anyway. Seem people are more interested in homophones though.
That’s where I would start anyway. Maybe JSTOR or Academia but reveal something.