English homophones
Abel/able
"Abel" is a name; "able" is an adjective - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Grammar picks the spelling
Same sound, different grammar: "Abel" arrives as a name, while "able" is an adjective. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "ab" then splits - "Abel" (4 letters) vs "able" (4).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across Abel, able: abel. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
Abel
4 letters · 2 vowels · shape VCVC
Inventory abel · no private letters vs siblings
able
4 letters · 2 vowels · shape VCCV
Inventory abel · no private letters vs siblings
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "Abel" when you mean: The son of Adam and Eve who was killed by his brother Cain.
- Write "able" when you mean: Having the necessary powers or the needed resources to accomplish a task.
Known mistypes of these spellings
Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.
Each spelling
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (Abel, able). Here's where to go from here.
- "able" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #352 in English). Full entry
- Among English homophone groups, a cluster of 2 spellings ranks #133 by size (1,007 groups in this vintage). Corpus statistics
- Explore a nearby 2-spelling cluster: Allison · Alison. Nearby cluster
- Grammar often disambiguates this cluster, match the meaning to the part of speech before picking a spelling. Pick by meaning
PlainSpell is a reference corpus, not spelling advice. Verify unusual forms in context.