The words greaves, grieves sound the same but have different meanings and spellings. Why do greaves, grieves sound the same even though they are completely different words?
The answer is simple: greaves, grieves are homophones of the English language.
The unmelted residue left after animal fat has been rendered.
Plural form of grieve.
Third-person singular simple present indicative form of grieve.
Definitions from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition, from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License and Wordnik.
Homophones (literally "same sound") are usually defined as words that share the same pronunciation, regardless of how they are spelled.
If they are spelled the same then they are also homographs (and homonyms); if they are spelled differently then they are also heterographs (literally "different writing").