The words toes, tows sound the same but have different meanings and spellings. Why do toes, tows sound the same even though they are completely different words?
The answer is simple: toes, tows are homophones of the English language.
Plural form of toe.
Plural form of tow.
Definitions 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").