English homophones
altar/alter
"altar" is a noun; "alter" is a verb - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Grammar picks the spelling
Same sound, different grammar: "altar" arrives as a noun, while "alter" is a verb. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "alt" then splits - "altar" (5 letters) vs "alter" (5).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across altar, alter: alrt. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
altar
5 letters · 2 vowels · shape VCCVC
Inventory alrt · no private letters vs siblings
alter
5 letters · 2 vowels · shape VCCVC
Inventory aelrt · private e
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "altar" when you mean: A table or similar flat-topped structure used for religious rites.
- Write "alter" when you mean: To change the form or structure of.
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 (altar, alter). Here's where to go from here.
- "alter" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #6,540 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: Aryan · Arian. 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.