English homophones
balm/BOM
"BOM" (#18,504 written frequency) beats "balm" (#20,852) in this 2-word /bɑːm/ cluster. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Frequency splits the cluster
These 2 spellings keep the same /bɑːm/ reading, but written frequency splits them hard: "BOM" leads at #18,504, with "balm" trailing at #20,852.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- No shared spelling stem: "balm" is 4 letters, "BOM" is 3; only the sound ties them.
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across balm, BOM: bm. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
balm
4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCC
Inventory ablm · private al
BOM
3 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVC
Inventory bmo · private o
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "balm" when you mean: Any of various aromatic resins exuded from certain plants, especially trees of the genus Commiphora of Africa, Arabia and India and Myrox…
- Write "BOM" when you mean: Acronym of bill of materials.
Known mistypes of these spellings
Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.
- balm ← ablm · ballm · balmm · baml · bbalm · blam
Each spelling
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (balm, BOM). Here's where to go from here.
- "BOM" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #18,504 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: beat · beet. Nearby cluster
- Each spelling in "balm, BOM" has its own headword page with definition, IPA, and misspelling variants. First entry
PlainSpell is a reference corpus, not spelling advice. Verify unusual forms in context.