English homophones
bain/bane
"bain" is an adjective; "bane" 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: "bain" arrives as an adjective, while "bane" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "ba" then splits - "bain" (4 letters) vs "bane" (4).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across bain, bane: abn. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
bain
4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVVC
Inventory abin · private i
bane
4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVCV
Inventory aben · private e
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "bain" when you mean: Ready; willing.
- Write "bane" when you mean: A cause of misery or ruin.
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 (bain, bane). Here's where to go from here.
- "bane" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #20,563 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: Brooke · brook. 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.