The homophones born and borne are both past-participle forms of the verb bear. Nevertheless, they have somewhat different meanings.

Born means produced or brought into life by the process of birth. Born can also refer to a particular quality or ability possessed since birth (as in "a natural-born liar").

Borne means carried by or spread by (as in "an air-borne disease").

See the examples and the usage notes below.

Also see:
Commonly Confused Words: Bare and Bear

Examples:

• "Wilbur was what farmers call a spring pig, which simply means that he was born in springtime."
  (E.B. White, Charlotte's Web. Harper, 1952)
• "'[He] was a remarkable speller,' said my aunt. 'A born speller. . . . He knew every word in the deck.'"
  (Eudora Welty, "Kin." The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty. Harvest, 1980)
• "He was tall and big and spoke English with the staccato accent of a New York-born descendant of West Indian parents."
  (Maya Angelou, The Heart of a Woman. Random House, 1981)
• "A brief anonymous laugh rose and was borne off by the breeze."
  (John Updike, "At a Bar in Charlotte Amalie." The Early Stories: 1953-1975. Random House, 2003)
• "Although sewers had existed in Roman times, it was the widespread introduction of public water supplies since the 18th century that turned water-borne wastes into a serious health hazard."
  (P.M. Try and G.J. Price, "Sewage and Industrial Effluents." Waste Treatment and Disposal, 1995)

Usage Notes:

• "Babies are born; burdens are borne. You can remember the difference by noting that e at the end--it's a burden for borne to bear. (Note: children can be borne, too, as long as their mother is in the sentence doing the heavy lifting. She had borne two children by the time she was 35; the gray hairs soon followed.")
  (Martha Brockenbrough, Things That Make Us [Sic]. St. Martin's Press, 2008)

• "In the sense of 'giving birth,' borne is used in phrases where the mother is the subject: She has borne six children, and also in the passive with by: borne by her. Born is used for all other passive constructions without by: He was born in Italy. Twins were born to her. a born leader. his Burmese-born wife."
  (Martin Manser, Good Word Guide, 7th ed. Bloomsbury, 2011)

Practice:

(a) "Mr. Twit was a twit. He was _____ a twit. And now at the age of sixty, he was a bigger twit than ever."
(Roald Dahl, The Twits. Jonathan Cape, 1980)

(b) "Over the plunging, many-coloured backs and heads of the centaurs, Harry saw Umbridge being _____ away through the trees by Bane."
(J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Bloomsbury, 2003)

(c) "Mrs. Wilson, with the speed _____ of long experience, took the gingerbread off the shelf and placed it carefully between the tank and the foxhole."
(Shirley Jackson, "After You, My Dear Alphonse." The Lottery and Other Stories. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1949)
 

Answers to Practice Exercises

Glossary of Usage: Index of Commonly Confused Words

200 Homonyms, Homophones, and Homographs