English homophones
aro/arrow
"aro" is an adjective; "arrow" is a noun - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Grammar picks the spelling
Same sound, different grammar: "aro" arrives as an adjective, while "arrow" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "ar" then splits - "aro" (3 letters) vs "arrow" (5).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across aro, arrow: aor. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
aro
3 letters · 2 vowels · shape VCV
Inventory aor · no private letters vs siblings
arrow
5 letters · 2 vowels · shape VCCVC
Inventory aorw · private w
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "aro" when you mean: Aromantic (not experiencing romantic attraction).
- Write "arrow" when you mean: A projectile consisting of a shaft, a point and a tail with stabilizing fins that is shot from a bow.
Known mistypes of these spellings
Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.
- arrow ← arorw · arow · arroww · arrwo · rarow
Each spelling
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (aro, arrow). Here's where to go from here.
- "arrow" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #5,758 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: abbey · Abby. 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.